No one’s perfect.  It’s obvious now that Tiger Woods is not even close.

SCOTT JACOBS

The news isn’t what anyone wants to hear.

It makes for great TV fodder, it even sells magazines, but no one wants to see the golden boy of all golden boys fall.  Not like this that is.

Tiger Woods is more than an athlete, he’s an icon.  He’s a brand.  He’s the face of an entire sport.  He’s the untarnished, unconquered, does everything right (even if we don’t always know what he’s doing) type of guy that has transcended sport.  He’s a global forcefield, married to the number one super model in the world.  When he speaks, people listen.  When he says hush, people shut up.

The world was his for the taking.

Until now.  The golden boy is not only not golden, it’s hard to even see a sparkle now.  The shine is gone.  That new car smell, has been replaced by the smell of trash.  In faster than you can say “World’s number one star” Tiger has messed up a squeaky clean image, leaving in his place a flawed, sex hungry (allegedly) hound, who not only is not who we thought he was.  Apparently, he’s not even close.

It started with a crash, and a fire hydrant, and a sketchy 9-11 call late in the morning from within his neighborhood, as his wife fought heroically to smash his back window to rescue the unconscious star.  But then there was silence.  And more silence.  The media got fed up.  The tabloids started buzzing.  Suddenly something seemed off.  This was more than a crash the world started thinking.  This was something bigger.

And now, the truth is starting to seep out.  The ugly, ugly truth.  Or at least bits and pieces of something, because quite frankly perfect little Tiger has become a body thrown into a river, getting ripped apart from every angle by blood seeking aligators.

Now ‘mistresses’ from all over are claiming they had an affair with Tiger.  Waitresses, other models, the list goes on.  Now they’re going on shows like Access Hollywood talking about what a lover Tiger was, the dirty texts he sent them, how he never took them into Elin’s bedroom.  It’s hard to know what to believe.  Nothing would shock me at this point: attention whores will do anything they can to get their 15 seconds of fame.

We hold our athletes to standards they can’t meet, so they hide behind ‘flawless images’ until the day that their cover gets blown.  I’m not saying all athletes are like this.  Many aren’t.

But something happened.  Or maybe it was a bunch of somethings.  Because it’s one thing when people allege that they were your mistress.  It’s another when your wife asks for the prenup in your marriage to be re-written.

Obviously, Elin Nordegren, Tiger’s supermodel wife, must feel humiliated and betrayed by the whole situation.  Whatever the situation may be.  But now it’s being reported that he’s basically paying her seven figures (chump change for Tiger) to stay with him.  I’m sorry, whatttttttttttttt???

Multiple sources have confirmed that Tiger is basically paying his wife off.  But it gets worse.  Way worse.

Apparently when they signed their original prenup, it said that they needed to be married for ten years for Nordegren to collect a divorce settlement of $20 million.  They’ve been married for five.  They have two children.  Am I the only one who’s starting to think this is just a little sick?

Look, Tiger is filthy rich.  Elin isn’t doing too bad herself.  So you always expect a crazy pre-nup like this when two high profile people of their caliber tie the knot.  But this pre-nup looks more like an incentive laden contract than a promise for life to love and to hold, to be there through good and bad, sickness and health.  This looks like a mockery of the sanctimony of marriage.  It’s amazing how people can annihilate issues like gay marriage when there are straight people like the Woods’ making a total mockery of the marriage system.

But that’s another discussion.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised?

I know, it’s kind of shocking that maybe we shouldn’t be… well, shocked.

Our stars are supposed to be role models.  They’re supposed to have it all figured out.  They’re supposed to go about their business the right way.  But o, who the heck are we kidding?  They’re still people.  Many of them, in no way, ready to take on the spotlight and fame that drifts their way, and often times hoovers over them like a smog cloud in L.A.

Tiger looked like he was different.  But looks as we’re all aware of can be quite deceiving.  Tiger is such a high profile name that it’s stunning to hear this sad and somewhat pathetic news, but he’s still just a person, going through life.  No one has it figured out.  No one’s perfect.  Many of us aren’t even close.  We expect more of our athletes, because we see them constantly: on TV, in magazines, on billboards, and the list goes on.

But even the greatest of the great, are still people.  Superior athletes yes.  But superior people: no.  All people may be ‘created equal’ but a select few get a lot more attention than others.  When we see these stars we immediately think that they must know more than us.  There must be something about them that’s just a little more spectacular.  A little more noble.  They live on centerstage, people follow their every moves.  It’s so easy to think that they have to perfect themselves, because they don’t seem to be left with much of  a choice.

But many times the opposite comes out of fame.  They take advantage of it. They lose their values (assuming they had some to begin with), and they let their popularity turn them into someone their younger self wouldn’t recognize.

Or maybe, just maybe, they were never such a spectacular person to begin with.

It feels like our childhood stars are falling by the wayside lately.  Michael Jordan with his divorces and his disturbingly bitter Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Andre Agassi with his tell all book where he confessed to doing crystal meth and hating tennis, and now Woods.

But maybe that’s just it.  These athletes are just regular people.  They do stupid stuff, and they make mistakes just like you and me.  Only they do there’s on a far bigger stage, where the ramifications reach far more people than say a you or me.

We hold them to standards they can’t meet, so they hide behind ‘flawless images’ until the day that their cover gets blown.  I’m not saying all athletes are like this.  Many aren’t.

We want to believe in perfect, especially when we’re kids.  But that ceases to exist as we get older.  Life is so simple when we’re younger.  Disney makes it look so… perfect.  But when you grow up you see life for what it is.  And with experience in the world comes this striking revelation: not only are athletes not superhereos, many of them aren’t really hereos at all.

It’s sad.  No doubt about it.

But it’s the truth.  The sooner we tell our young people that, and the sooner we accept that ourselves, the sooner we can move closer to a harsh reality: where nothing is perfect, and many people aren’t who they make themselves to be.

Photo: Reuters

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