First off, don't expect this post to include a bunch of one-liners about champion pro golfer Tiger Woods' Thanksgiving week collision near his Florida home. I'll be more sensitive than others who've spent the last week patting themselves on the back with their "expensive cars, hole in one" cracks.

No, I think I'll look at it from a sports/pop culture perspective. It seems as if every few years a megagazillionaire superstar athlete gets his mistress business put in the street through one transgression or another, and after the "I screwed up apology," we get the tabloid-style overdose of non-news about people who we only care about when they fly or when they crash.

Tiger is really the latest in a string of jocks who were celebrated just enough to become gods in our society. Big secret, though: we hate our gods just as much as we love them.

So I'll reiterate: this isn't about Tiger Woods being a pimp, but God knows from the way things look, he is certainly eligible for the diamond-encrusted gold cup at the 1973 Player's Ball.

No, this is about how we get caught up in the private lives of athletes, who, if they weren't superstar celebrities, we wouldn't give a crap about. For example, when Michael Vick was found guilty of dogfighting and subsequently jailed, the country went bananas. Not that I'm making excuses for him, but they kept the charges against him in the media for so long that I was scared to pet the terrier that lived downstairs from me.

Going farther back, in 2007, after 17 years, Michael Jordan's wife, Juanita, pulls an Oom Foo Foo and takes him to divorce court to the tune of $168 million. To date it's the most expensive celebrity divorce ever, enough to make Forbes magazine's list. Imagine making that mag's list for something other than being a superrich athlete.

Then, of course, was the case we just couldn't shut up about: Kobe Bryant and the sexual assault charge that wasn't. But what had happened was simply a case of the Laker's straight-outta-high-school phenom not being able to keep it in his pants. Fortunately, there was no evidence that any sexual assault had taken place. Instead, Kobe's wife gets a blindingly bright diamond ring and a televised public apology that will go down as a classic in the ESPN archives. Kobe gets more NBA championship rings and also gets rid of Shaquille O'Neal.

So you see, my friends, Tiger's problems are simply normal. There's nothing to worry about. Yeah, 'Saturday Night Live' really pushed the edges with a skit on Tiger's wife cracking him upside the head with a golf club on a night when domestic abuse victim Rihanna performed and, yeah, he's had to pretty much stay away from the golf course that has been both his playground and plantation for most of his life. He does prove once and for all, though, that he ain't the square we all thought he was.

He's just a bad driver who let his jump-offs get out of hand. Now what we must do is wait for his all-but-certain appearance on 'Oprah,' the book deals from his wife and the Larry King interviews from the so-called Tiger's mistresses, Rachel, Uchitel, Cori Rist, Jaimee Grubbs, Kalika Moquin, Jamie Jungers, Mindy Lawton and Holly Sampson. Personally, I'd like to see a Rockstar Games adaptation of the whole thing.

Maybe they could call it "Tiger Woods: Swingers."