Now that the daily deluge of Tiger Woods related babble has slowed to a steady drip, I figure it’s time to weigh in with a few select observations.  Many have faulted Tiger for failing to live up to his responsibilities as a role model and his almost complete lack of candor as events unfolded.  Others have lamented the new media frenzy – hourly tweets, blog commentary, TMZ, and the seemingly endless demand for fresh content from what currently purports to be televised “news”.  I never saw Tiger as a role model in the first place (he has always thrown clubs and has no sense of humor), and I don’t believe the media has been unfair.  If anything, the 24-hour coverage has simply accelerated the arc of the story and compressed what would have historically been a slow train wreck of months or years, into a few intense weeks.  In only two short months since the infamous slow-motion crash in the Escalade on November 27, up to 15 women have alleged what can only generously be called “affairs”, sponsors have run for the hills, and Tiger has already put himself halfway through rehab.  Come early April, Tiger will be swinging the clubs again and rolling out a neatly crafted redemption story while telling us that what hurts the most is having let down all the kids that once wanted to grow up to be Tiger.

What I find most offensive, and probably least likely to change, is that Tiger essentially created a parallel life (the one in which he’s happily married to a Swedish model and they have plenty of healthy babies) in order to sell us crappy stuff.  Why else would an athletic and wildly accomplished international sports icon with a predilection for casual sex suddenly get married and sprout a good-looking family?  Money.  From 1996 to 2007, Tiger amassed over $100M in prize money as a direct result of his superior golfing abilities.  His carefully crafted image, however, was the real cash cow as endorsements brought in almost $670M over the same twelve years* with a huge increase seen post-marriage.  Gatorade, Nike, Gillette.  Like I said, it’s crappy stuff, but very profitable when paired with an effective sales pitch.

If it were me, I’d take the $100M and live my life the way I wanted to, rather than agree to live a lie for a slightly bigger yacht or incrementally more ridiculous home furnishings.  But Tiger didn’t stick around Stanford long enough to figure out the concept of decreasing marginal returns.  Once you have enough – and $100M should be enough – the additional dollars just don’t deliver the same measure of happiness or sense of accomplishment as the first few million.  $100M and a bit of press coverage (whether positive or negative) is plenty of juice to fund global sex binges on private planes – just ask Bill Clinton.  Tiger could have carved out his own niche as the Derek Jeter of golf – a hugely talented athlete and perennially available bachelor taking in $10M a year in endorsements, rather than the $75-100M Tiger started to pull in once he could be portrayed as blissfully settled down.  Instead, Tiger and his sponsors conspired to create a storybook life that duped consumers in an effort to sell us more artificially flavored sugar water and disposable razors.  Well, now we know Tiger is both artificially flavored and disposable too.

There are many lessons to be learned here, and they do not involve the pitfalls of text messaging or the dangers of a new media paradigm.  Instead, perhaps we should begin to look for role models in the people we know and see every day – family, friends, and co-workers who have steadily earned our respect by sharing something authentic of themselves.  The bottom line is that celebrities and their corporate sponsors don’t care about us and we should be careful not to associate a passing interest in our wallets with something resembling a personal relationship.  Great role models are all around us, but they don’t plaster their bodies with logos for throwaway goods or appear in magazines hawking the possibility that you too can achieve nirvana if you can only manage to stretch for that new Tag Heuer.  Tiger’s tale is a cautionary one that should make us weary of celebrities who make money for themselves by selling us things.  It’s a lot harder to sell us out if we’ve never bought in.

Sources:
* Golf Digest, The Golf Digest 50 – http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2008-02/gd50