Rachel Uchitel Pics and TMZ: How Tiger Woods Took Over The Internet

"Tiger Woods Car Accident." "Tiger Woods Affair." "Tiger Woods TMZ." "Tiger Woods National Enquirer." "Rachel Uchitel Pics." "Elin Nordegren."

In case you were wondering if Tiger Woods is the most popular athlete in the world, the above terms should put any doubt to rest.

Those are six of the most popular search terms (according to Google Trends) over the past 24 hours, and "Tiger Woods Car Accident Pictures" just became a hot search trend since I started this article.

And looking at the odd details and rampant speculation coming out of Woods' recent car accident, folks won't be slowing down on the Web searches about the world's No. 1 golfer anytime soon.

So far, the focus of the story is what we don't know: Why was Tiger leaving his house at 2:30 a.m. following Thanksgiving? Is there any truth to the rumored affair with Rachel Uchitel reported in "The National Enquirer"? How did Woods manage to slam into a fire hydrant leaving his own house? And was it Tiger's wife, Elin Nordegren, rather than the accident, that left Tiger battered and bruised (as TMZ is now reporting)?

And while hungry Web searchers may not get answers to any of these questions anytime soon, we do know one thing:

Tiger Woods has now become the most popular athlete in the world.

Ever.

Since storming on the golf scene, Tiger has been superhuman. The green jackets, the red shirts, the fist pumps, the Nike mega-contract, etc.—he's had no flaws. But now, he's either screwed up (ranging from some bad driving to having an affair) or he got scratched up by his wife.

At best, it's a little dirt. At worst, it's a full-fledged scandal.

And now the whole world is looking for any detail they can get.

While the likes of Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan—the only other athletes who can lay claim to being the most popular athletes of the modern world—weren't perfect, neither played in an age where information and speculation spread as quickly as it does in 2009.

And now we have a perfect storm of the world's most dominant, most powerful, and most popular athlete, at the mercy of celebrity gossip sites and Google keywords.

Perhaps Tiger Woods is human after all.