If tabloids are to be believed, then you can currently track the infamous golfer to a sex rehab center in South Africa:

TIGER Woods was last night at the centre of a riddle over claims he has checked into a sex-addiction clinic. The love-rat golfer is said to be on a strict six-week programme at a £5,000-a-week centre in South Africa.

"Number 19 in the books! I LOVE BLONDES!"

The horrible English should be a dead giveaway that this rumor comes from The Sun (a UK based tabloid). I say good for El Tigre – but no matter what happens, AT&T, Accenture, and now GM won’t take you back – let alone your wife.

Tiger can stop with the facade. At this point we know he can sink any putt and nail any slut he wants. Business was good for TW Enterprises, and why not continue it. You can’t tame a tiger, and this one is no different.

Mark McGwire finally admitted to the world what we already knew; he used performance enhancing drugs throughout the 90’s, including 1998 when he set a then Major League Baseball record of 70 home runs in a single season. This naturally raises the question of whether or not the steroids helped him achieve the success he had. To that McGwire said

I’m sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids. I had good years when I didn’t take any and I had bad years when I didn’t take any. I had good years when I took steroids and I had bad years when I took steroids. But no matter what, I shouldn’t have done it and for that I’m truly sorry.

Everyone knew he was lying...

When a man faces the nation and admits he cheated, that takes balls. One could argue that he should have done so during the congressional hearings a few years back, but that’s water under the bridge. While I don’t condone what he did, I can certainly appreciate when a person owns up to their faults. It’s not easy to do in the 4 walls of your own home, let alone in front of a camera broadcasting your confession to the world.But that’s about as far as I will go in defending him. The bottom line is he knowingly cheated the game of baseball.

Baseball purists, analysts, newspaper columnists and others will surely parade his head around on a stick, and make an example of him; someone who cheated to get a competitive advantage and will now pay the ultimate price of not being elected to the Hall of Fame. But if you don’t elect McGwire in, you need to refuse Bonds, Clemens, and ARod (just to name a few). The question now becomes whether or not the voters have enough balls to stick by their guns and refuse all of them.

Electing one, and not the other is sending the entirely wrong message to kids, and the mainstream public who pays good money to watch the product MLB puts on the field. Elect all of them, and you’ve basically said “we don’t care about the fact they cheated, everyone did, so no one really had an advantage”, but tell that to the players who have seen their records disgraced by cheaters.

The only option the Hall of Fame has is to flat out refuse anyone who has publicly admitted to taking steroids. If you’re a young kid and getting very good at baseball (good enough to get drafted) seeing an entire era of players get denied the sports ultimate honor because they took PED’s would surely deter you from even trying them.

What about the Mitchell Report you ask? Anyone’s name who has come up numerous times as an alleged steroid user who is being considered for the Hall of Fame should have to go through the equivelant of a criminal interrogation. I’m talking lie detector tests, one-on-one interviews with top interrogation experts, background checks with former clubhouse attendants and trainers. If you pass, you’re in, if not, you are denied with no chance for appeal.

While all of this may seem a bit extreme, it’s the only way in my mind to clean up the game for future generations. By denying the sports ultimate personal honor to those who disgraced and belittled the sport where statistics mean so much, you are sending a clear message that America’s Pastime is a sport we can all trust.

I don't know why she has a moustache. Just roll with it.

Once again, a dumb receiver has opened his mouth in a playoff game, only to help his team get its ass kicked in the end.  Talented receiver Desean Jackson was rendered ineffective for the 3rd straight time this season (his 4th quarter touchdown was in garbage minutes, already down 27 points).  At least Terrell Owens would run to the Cowboys mid-field and shit on their star after doing something.  If you’re going to showboat, at least get it right.

Story From AP (Courtesy of Yahoo! News):

Otherwise the game was uneventful.  The Cowboys played well as they have recently, and the game was virtually over with 15-20 minutes of game time left.

Having lived in Dallas for a year and a half, I already know what’s coming next (besides Super Bowl predictions).  The further vilification of Jessica Simpson.

“See, I told you he was ruining her game!  She’s gone and now Romo’s a winner!!”  Nevermind Romo was relatively inexperienced, or that every quarterback ever has had at least one playoff-choke, or that John Elway didn’t win a Super Bowl until he was practically 40.  Having sex with attractive women obviously makes you less good at sports.  Just look at Tiger Woods.

Sorry.  It’s just too easy lately.

Story from ESPN

When I think of USC football, three things come to mind. Coach Carroll, Great Players, and Southern California. If the rumors are true, Carroll inherits a mediocre to average team of NFL players and weather conditions less than ideal in Seattle.

His NFL head coaching resume is barely over .500. He coached the Jets to a 6-10 season and was promptly fired. Hired by New England, he went 27-21 over 3 seasons before getting canned. Compare this to a 97-19 record over a 9 year stretch at USC. From 2002-2008 his team never finished the season outside of the AP Top 5.

So why on Earth would someone leave that situation to presumably resume an NFL career that is simply average? He has the keys to the city of LA, and is every bit as popular there as guys like Kobe Bryant. With no professional football team, his team rules that entire landscape. He has singled-handedly built a dynasty at USC, and could stay around for as long as he wants (aka job security). He can recruit from all over the country, and in the off season can bask in the California sun. Again – WHY WOULD ANYONE LEAVE THIS?

You won't see parties like this in Seattle coach... just saying

Maybe there is something he knows that the rest of us don’t. Maybe he feels he has to try to succeed in the NFL one more time. Whatever the thinking behind his reasoning, one thing is clear; he feels pretty damn confident in his abilities as a football coach to walk away from what I believe is the best job in football – period.

Best of luck Coach Carroll – you made USC the team of the decade, and one of the most fun teams to watch. Just wish you’d reconsider and cement your legacy in SoCal.

While I cannot verify this, it seemed like cameras caught a glimpse of the one and only Mercury Morris in Jerry Jones’ owners box during the first half of Saturday Nights victory over the previously undefeated Saints. I hope someone with a better image capture can get a clearer picture, but this is all we have at the moment.

While everyone in the country is concentrated on the growing number of alleged mistresses coming forward claiming they had a romp with the worlds #1 golfer,  a new plot is developing, one in which Woods may be in the thick of.  The transgressions Tiger admits to, while disturbing from a family and personal perspective, are nothing new to society. All women in think men cheat on them and every few months when there is no news, the gossip magazines just make up a story about Angelina Jolie breaking up with Brad Pitt.

But today a Canadian doctor, who is linked to supposedly working with Tiger, is under investigation by the FBI and Canadian Mounties for a stop at the border where Human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, were found in Galea’s bag in the car (according to the NY Times)

As you dive deeper into the story, and how it’s related to El Tigre, Dr. Galea, visited Woods four times in February and March to provide platelet-rich plasma therapy as he recovered from knee surgery.  This therapy involves taking a blood sample, removing red blood cells that leave the platelet rich plasma, and re-injecting into the patient to expedite the healing process.

Of course, Tiger was not the first athlete to undergo the therapy. Early in 2009 Hines Ward, a Super Bowl MVP sprained his MCL in the AFC Championship game. By all estimates of traditional medicines, it was unlikely that Ward would play 2 weeks later in the Super Bowl. He did the therapy (after reviewing it’s history), and rigorous rehab. He played at least 2 weeks before playing if he had done a traditional recovery, yet the story went largely unreported. Perhaps it will take a mega-star like Tiger to bring this into our collective conscious.

With that said, the debate of the 2010’s may be just exactly what is a steroid or performance enhancing drug? In the 2000’s the media and congress went after baseball.  Society was painted a picture of artificially created pharmaceuticals that players were hiding in their lockers and going to seedy ‘clinics’ to get the drug administered. The reality is we may now see legitimate procedures being done on athletes by credited doctors who are pushing the boundaries of scientific medicine.

The line between what is and isn’t a performance enhancement is blurred more than ever. On one hand, what they are putting in your body with this particular treatment was created by your body, nothing artificial about it. On the other, your body never produced the platelet rich blood; it had to be modified in a lab to get the desired result.

As we learn more about this, and other therapies, opinions will form and lines will be drawn. Professional leagues will have a new, but all to familiar issue to deal with; defining what is acceptable for its athletes to do in terms of personal fitness. The talking heads on TV will likely be varied in their opinions, and everyone with a twitter account will chime in with their 140 character take.  But at the end of the day, it will ultimately be the athletes themselves who push and influence the policy. It just remains to be seen to what medical extremes they are willing to go in order to achieve athletic success.

This week Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen interviewed NBA Commissioner David Stern, among the topics discussed; will a women ever play in the National Basketball Association?

This look scares me...

I asked if we might see a woman playing NBA basketball within a decade.

“I think we might,” said Stern. “I don’t want to get into all kinds of arguments with players and coaches about the likelihood. But I really think it’s a good possibility.”

The media, and more specifically men have a habit of trying to legitimize womens professional sports by drawing comparisons in talent. The prevailing thought seems to be that the most dominant female athlete in her sport should be able to compete in the mens league.

It’s no secret that the NFL, NBA, MLB are the cash cows of sport. People pay the most to go to these games in person, and the most people watch these spots on TV. The exact opposite can be said of the WNBA, Softball, and Field Hockey. It’s not that these sports are necessarily bad, or that the women playing them are unathletic; but compared to males their physical prowess and stature is dwarfed. And when the primary candidate to watch sports is a male 18-48, they don’t want to watch something they feel is inferior in comparison.

One of a select few WNBA players who can dunk.

But if a women can be competitive against men, well, that changes the dynamic, and adds an aura of credibility around the womens game. That’s the prevailing logic, but is it really all that sound? Lets take a look at how women fair competing against men, starting with Billie Jean King.

1973 – Billie Jean King wins the “Battle of the Sexes” against Bobby Riggs

2000-2004 – Katie Hnida becomes the first female to score a point in division 1 college football. Later accused player on University of Colorado of rape while she was on the team.

2000-Current – Michelle Wie becomes the first woman to play in a PGA tour event in 2004 at the age of 14. She missed the cut. She played 5 more times in the next 3 years; missing the cut in all of them. Just recently she won her first LPGA tournament.

2005-Current – Danica Patrick becomes the first woman to win an F1 race in 2008 with a win over in Japan. Her career F1 record is 82 starts, 1 win, 3 poles, 16 top 5 finishes.

The prevailing theme throughout those 4 examples is that these women became the ‘first to’ do something in their sports. So the question must be asked; is it the novelty/marketing, or the actual athletic prowess that is the reason gifted women are competing in these events?

She will be racing in NASCAR next year.

Sadly, it looks to be the former. Having one moment, or triumph is not sustainable. You may see a woman play in the NBA, and score a basket. Headlines would go crazy, but the odds of her becoming a legitimate threat off the bench, or start putting up 4 points a game in limited time is very very unlikely. So would that be a battle cry for all women of similar skill to migrate to the NBA? Not so much.

If the NBA knows whats best, it should not allow a woman to play in the league. They setup the WNBA for a reason; to give women with talent in basketball a professional league, not a jumping off point to get to the NBA. We should as a society be able to appreciate the talents of both men and women in sports without the need to intertwine the two.