McNair Lessons Cast Pall Over Tiger

Out of the nightclubs they slink, itching to sell the details about their trysts with Tiger Woods to the highest bidder. The alleged particulars are lurid, perhaps even embarrassing to Tiger if he has a soul -- he is said to enjoy hair-pulling; he is miserable in his marriage; there were encounters with a porn star; a sexual rendezvous with a flapjacks waitress in his SUV before Tiger drove her home to the trailer park -- and if Woods escapes this scandal with only a few scratches, a $164 careless driving fine and dents in his false image, he should wear his lucky red shirt every day.

As one British tabloid put it Monday, Tiger is at 7-under, and we'll probably reach the 19th hole before the week is through. I'm not suggesting all the mistresses share the same crazy gene, but the more rocks that get turned over, the more it appears Tiger ought to give thanks that his "personal failings" and "transgressions" -- such brilliantly crafted reasoning from his PR machine -- didn't lead him down the same garden path as Steve McNair.

It's been a shade over five months since McNair, the former NFL quarterback, was executed by his mistress Sahel Kazemi, who then turned the gun on herself. Kazemi, a 20-year-old waitress who had been openly dating the married McNair, was said to be distraught over learning he was also involved in another extramarital affair. Kazemi was a lovely, confused and foolish young woman who became unhinged by what she thought was love gone wrong. She did an evil, horrible thing, killing McNair and herself, and in the bloody aftermath, the sports world pretended it had actually learned a few things.

The reflection and hand-wringing lasted about five minutes, or roughly the time it took for the next groupie to pout her lips, flip her hair and lure the latest willing athlete off the court or out of the bunker.

Woods, the fortunate cad, has plenty on his plate: the latest reports, tucked inside the never-ending river of salacious details about his gal-pals ("Tiger used me as a sex toy!" "She's a sex-addicted cougar!"), are far more alarming than his prowling.

There's a Florida trooper, one of the first on the scene after the world's No. 1 golfer crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree in his exclusive neighborhood around 2:25 a.m. on Nov. 27, who suspected Woods was driving under the influence. The trooper, Joshua Evans, sought a subpoena for Eldrick Tiger Woods' blood results from the hospital where Woods was taken, but prosecutors rejected the petition for insufficient information, according to a police report released Monday.

In the report, Evans writes, "A witness stated that the driver had consumed alcohol earlier in the day and the same witness removed the driver from the vehicle after the collision. Also, the same witness stated that the driver was prescribed medication (Ambien and Vicodin). Impairment of the driver is also suspected due to the careless driving that resulted in the traffic crash."

A first-responder's account isn't sufficient evidence? Seems like the prosecutor's decision might be different if the driver didn't also happen to be the first athlete to earn a billion dollars, if he didn't employ enough lawyers and crisis counselors to make the White House folks blush.

It's reasonable to assume the witness is Tiger's wife Elin, who told Windermere, Fla., police she used a golf club to smash out the back windows of the Cadillac Escalade to rescue him. When police arrived, Elin was kneeling over Woods, who was bleeding from cuts on his lips. The vehicle engine was still running, its front door was jammed and both rear door windows were broken. A golf cart was in the road, two golf clubs lay nearby.

Both Tiger and Elin have refused to answer questions from the police about the accident, or the events that precipitated it. If there was a domestic violence incident, and if the genders had been reversed, no PR machine in the world would have the power to curb the demand for an explanation. But since it's a beautiful, slight woman who is believed to have attacked her no-good cheating dog of a husband, it's a Saturday Night Live skit celebrating a scorned chick's revenge. Elin reportedly packed her bags and moved out of the couple's palatial estate Monday.

Everything is twisted in this Tiger tale. Even the statement he released following the accident dripped with arrogance.
Everything is twisted in this Tiger tale. Even the statement he released following the accident dripped with arrogance. He whined about "tabloid scrutiny," as if TMZ and the National Enquirer would have been gunning for him if he were merely lunging at Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors and not shaking his nine-iron at every cocktail waitress and party planner who caught his wandering eye.

What Tiger failed to offer in his mea culpa was a shout-out to all the golf writers and sports media who've protected him over the years. I cover about two golf events a year; his carousing has often been a hot topic in the press room and on the course. But it was always just gossip, not news, and sports journalists were correct not to write about it, just as we shouldn't be in the business of dishing about the affairs of McNair or any other professional athlete. If we did, there wouldn't be enough bandwidth to report anything else.

But when the world's top golfer gets in a car accident, when the hospital that treats him sends out a statement saying he's in "serious" condition, when he pulls out of his own tournament because of injuries sustained that night, it's news. When McNair was spotted squiring pretty young things around Nashville, it wasn't a story, but it was news, terrible, tragic news, when he was murdered by his jealous, unstable girlfriend.

Tiger's harem -- his girlfriends, his mistresses, his road beef, his sex toys, his hos, whatever you want to call them -- all seem to be vying for the right to be the top chick in his life, after the wife, of course. There's the reality show contestant, the cocktail waitress, the Manhattan party girl, the British TV broadcaster, the porn star, the Las Vegas club hopper, the pancake-waitress who says she hooked up with Tiger in a church parking lot and at his home while the pregnant Elin was out of town.

He has his type: store-bought bosoms, buffed bodies, puffy lips, long, processed straight hair, Caucasian ("The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother waaaant?" goes one parody song making the radio rounds.) Tiger's obvious tastes sure made it easy for his enablers -- his friends, bodyguards, agents and lackeys on the payroll -- to corral the girls and, if they passed the cut, arrange their flights and hotels for liaisons on the road.

What Woods needed, and this is going far beyond the obvious suggestion of keeping it in his pants, was someone to detect whether these women were simply narcissist, money-grubbing twits whose discretion could be bought, or full-on crazy loons who might put the precious golfer and his wife and two kids in serious danger.

Tiger willingly, ruthlessly ruined his carefully crafted image as the super cool, conservative family guy who could sell cars and apparel to grandmas unfamiliar with golf. He's lucky that's not all he's lost.