Watching Tiger's new best friend…

“Did you hear the one about Tiger Woods and the cocktail wait-”

“Yes, we’ve heard it.”

“Oh…how about the one where Tiger walks into this bar and-”

“Heard that one, too.”

“Well did you hear the one where Ben Roethlisberger hired a bodyguard and…”

As his friends around the table leaned in and soaked up Randy’s every last word, he made sure to pour extra gusto into the punchline…

“…and then Clarice said, ‘That’s why they don’t sell pants!’”

The crowd went wild and Randy basked in the glow of a joke told right and a fan base inspired.  That night Randy took solace in the fact that Ben Roethlisberger helped prove to himself that he indeed “still had it.”

And somewhere Tiger Woods is smiling, practicing golf and smiling some more.  Why?  Becuase now that Ben Roethlisberger elevated the game of athletes committing sexual misconduct to level five, Tiger is just a golfer again.

Sure, he’ll play in a  tournament next month that will bring some of the talk back, but it won’t be as bad as The Masters, right?  It can’t be.  And then another major will roll around and he’ll face some scrutiny about pressure at a major, but it will be calmer than Augusta.  Before you know it, most people will forget about what he did (besides he only cheated on his wife…a lot).

And who does Tiger have to thank for some of this alleviated pressure?  None other than Big Ben.

Roethlisberger went ahead and trumped good old Tiger by doing everything he could to disgust America’s sports fans by having one single incident in a club bathroom go awry.

Most Americans don’t care that Tiger Woods may have been beaten with his own golf club by his wife, Elin, in front of his house.  Especially when you consider that Big Ben exposed himself to a 20-year-old college student in a club hallway.

Sports fans can ignore the fact that over a dozen women claimed to have “been with” Tiger when they consider that Roethlisberger hired Pennsylvania policemen to guard his tryst with the Georgia college student (one of those police officers has since resigned).

Amateur golfers can find solace in the fact that Woods only had naked pictures taken of him by one of his mistresses to use as  blackmail, while Roethlisberger’s escapades have left Steeler fans with an appetite for dried meat snacks, wondering how they will be able to live without Big Ben’s Beef Jerky, Roethlisberger’s signature line of meaty snacks.

ESPN’s coverage of Tiger Woods has gone from DEFCON 5 to a flatline in the wake of the Roethlisberger scandal.  Surely, Ben should keep checking his mail for a thank you card from Tiger, maybe he will even refer him to his sex rehab facility.

When it comes to sex scandals and athletes, the way out used to be to win a championship (think Kobe Bryant) and make everyone forget.  Now that they are so common, offenders need to just wait for the next one to come up and their own scandal will eventually blow over.  There is only one lesson to be learned from this astute analysis:

When it comes to sexual misconduct, there are no winners…unless you’re Tiger Woods.