Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Quickie: Athlete of Year Is... Tiger?

It is absurd to argue that any athlete besides Tiger is "Athlete of the Year."

Jimmie Johnson is a nice choice by the AP. Mariano Rivera is a nice choice by Sporting News. But both turn a blind eye to the story of the year in sports.

Sorry: Sometimes, they're just not the happy ones. Sometimes, it's the scandalous ones -- actually, it takes an extreme scandal to eclipse some of the truly amazing accomplishments of a sports year (say, Usain Bolt redefining speed).

And the Tiger scandal qualifies. By almost any measure, it is the sports scandal of the year -- perhaps more epically (but for once, I'll refrain from that). It is the sports STORY of the year. It makes him the sports FIGURE of the year.

The other guys represent nice stories. Tiger represents THE story.

That's the lead of today's SN column, which includes a lot more:

*Still sucks to be the Giants.
*Really sucks to be Eric Mangini.
*Tyreke Evans > Brandon Jennings
*For Dec. 22, we've got a pretty good bowl game.
*Kentucky may have 2000 wins, but their most memorable game remains a loss.

See the entire thing here. More later -- you cannot think that I won't have an opinion about "TMZSports.com."

-- D.S.

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