Gatorade Gives Up on Paper Tiger

They stood by Tiger Woods through three months of scandal, rumors, waffle waitresses and porn stars. Through sex addiction therapy, hiding out, Ambien sex details and no comments in self-defense.

And then a week after Woods apologized, Gatorade execs decided this is the time to drop him as an endorser.

Why now? Gatorade gave no answers Friday, but I think I understand. His apology changed everything. It was when Woods took his bad act public, and actually bugged me more than what he was apologizing for. Which was none of our business.

All these years of keeping everything private, even firing people who talked too much, and that wasn't about protecting his family, as he said the other day.

Turns out, he put that giant curtain around his life for the simple purpose of keeping people from knowing that there was nothing behind the curtain.

He suddenly looks weak. Hollow. Like a guy who learned all his lessons about life during a childhood spent entirely on a golf course. His apology was clearly fake, scripted, dishonest. And if felt more like a submission than anything.

Gatorade stuck with Serena Williams after her f-bomb laced threats toward a line judge at the U.S. Open. Why? Because she still looked like a strong woman after her tirade.

With Woods, we could accept it if the nice-guy image were false. But the tough guy, the Tiger, had to stay. Certainly, he could not get away with looking like an empty suit.

How absurd that Woods was apologizing to the world for having sex with consenting adults. A new book about Jerry West claims that Magic Johnson had sex with 300-500 partners a year during his basketball prime.

Does he need to apologize to you for that? Or did Wilt Chamberlain for his numbers? How about rock stars: Mick Jagger?

Woods' sex life is none of our business.

But in the game we play with celebrities, people want to idolize them, then make sport of gossiping when they fail, and then accept a heartfelt apology.

Woods fell victim to that game, I guess. But he also made the decision that he owed an apology to the public. That's when he made this your business.

And if you're going to give an apology, you have to mean it. You ... cannot ... talk ... .like ... .a ... ro ... bot, especially if you have been comfortably in front of a camera and microphone thousands of times.

A fake apology is a slimy thing done to the people he's apologizing to. Done to you.


We've seen Woods celebrate, win, pump his fists, tear up, swear and throw his clubs. But when it came time to offer up a heartfelt apology, there was no heart.

No emotion. Is anything in there at all?

"We no longer see a role for Tiger in our marketing efforts, and have ended our relationship,'' a Gatorade spokesperson said. "We wish him all the best.''

AT&T and Accenture both dropped him a while back; others companies have de-emphasized him.

But now, the CEO of Procter and Gamble said he isn't sure Woods will be used in Gillette commercials anymore, calling him a "distraction.''

And Gatorade was the first one to dump him fully after the apology.

The thing is, it's starting to appear that his image was not just enhanced, but instead built out of smoke. He ended his apology by asking people to believe in him again, or something like that. But if that really matters to him, and it's not just to reclaim endorsements, then he's going to have to earn our adulation back by being open and honest.

In fact, that needs to be the rule for all athletes from now on. Woods' first move was to hide out for a few months, and then make a statement/press conference with a group of friends, setting conditions on a public apology by demanding that the media don't ask questions. Tiger declawed himself.

I would like to know how many people in the room were his employees. Also, whether the awkward hug he gave his mother was written in the script.

After the apology, Woods and his wife Elin sent a letter to the parents of their daughter's preschool, saying they wanted to "offer our personal apology for any inconvenience you are experiencing due to the increased media scrutiny surrounding our children.''

Silly me, I thought the inconvenience was due to Woods cheating on his wife.

Still, this was where he did score points with that apology, when he lectured the media about following his kids and divulging where their school is. I have yet to see any evidence that that actually happened, by the way.

But Woods at his lowest is above the media on the food chain of public opinion any day, so that was a good place to go for sympathy. It also was the one time he raised his voice in real passion.

Now, President Obama and President Clinton reportedly have made calls to reach out to Woods personally, believe it or not. It would seem that Clinton has some experience in these matters.

But Gatorade has given up, feeling it can't rebuild a Tiger, that the smoke has blown away.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com