Society Expects Too Much From Tiger Woods, Other Professional Athletes

For the better part of a week, the leading story on just about every major outlet has been the drama surrounding Tiger Woods.

You can't turn your television on without seeing something about Tiger, or a new mistress coming forward and saying she had relations with him.

But is all this attention really necessary? Are we truly shocked that a professional athlete cheated on his wife and has girls on the side? Shouldn't we be used to this kind of story by now?

We've already had famous names like Kobe Bryant and Alex Rodriguez in the recent past come out and admit to affairs, so why are so many people shocked when it's Tiger?

As a society, we hold professional athletes on this pedestal that they have no business being put on; by us or anyone else for that matter. We claim that they are "role models" or "heroes" to our children, but we couldn't be more wrong about that.

Most of you may remember when former NBA star Charles Barkley came out and said "I am not a role model," in a Nike commercial . If I were standing in the same room I would have stood up and given Barkley a standing ovation because as much as we hate to admit it, he's right.

Barkley, at the end of the commercial, went on to say, "Just because I can dunk a basketball, doesn't mean I should raise your kids." The man has a way with words, there's no denying that.

People who argue the "role models" point will tell you that these athletes need to accept the role, whether they like it or not.

A statement like that is just a cop-out because you want to believe, as naive as it is, that athletes will never let you down, never do anything wrong.

If you've watched sports for most of your life, you'd know that that line of thinking is garbage and unreasonable.

How many times have we seen a professional athlete get arrested or do something that got them in trouble with the law?

How many times have we seen them act like spoiled brats asking for money they don't deserve? And yet we still think they're role models?

Tiger Woods is no different from the Kobe Bryants, the Alex Rodriguezes, or even the Barry Bonds of the world. They all cheated, in one form or another, and they all got caught.

When are we, as a society, going to wake up and stop putting a title on an athlete that is undeserving of it?

When are we going to wake up and realize that they are just another human being that makes a career out of playing a game? Something that's hardly worthy of the "role model" title.

Whatever happens with Tiger and his family from this point forward should remain private.

But, because Woods is a professional athlete, society believes that they are entitled to know everything about his personal life from here on out. That's just asking for disappointment.

For Tiger, the biggest question now becomes, did he ruin more than just his reputation?

Prior to this incident, Woods was known as, arguably, the best golfer of the sports' entire history.

Will he go from one of the most loved and followed golfers to one of the most hated and jeered? Will his peers look at him and treat him differently than they ever did? Will they still see him as a golfer or as an unfaithful husband?

For now, he'll repair what he can of his marriage and the news outlets will pay any amount of money to find the next missing mistress that Tiger apparently had a tryst with.

Until then, the media will force feed us every bit of this story they can, not allowing us  a break from the drama.

Though I imagine there are those who are eating this up, forming their own opinions of Tiger and his situation, because they feel they're "entitled" to know every dirty personal detail.

It's how society works. When there's drama, we want every detail regardless of how bad those details get. We're insatiable like that.