Arenas one star worthy of our forgiveness

You can find no quick truths to a man's contrition. Take Gilbert Arenas, for example. Arenas wrote a column in The Washington Post decrying the stupidity of his brandishing handguns, as if he were Wyatt Earp, in a place where Glocks and .44 Magnums didn't belong.



His essay was a compelling piece of prose, words worthy of a man who knew his behavior was outside the lines.

"I understand the importance of teaching nonviolence to kids in today's world," Arenas wrote an op-ed piece for The Post. "Guns and violence are serious problems, not joking matters -- a lesson that's been brought home to me over the past few weeks."

From his words, he sounds as if he understands his civic failings, though who can be certain. I mean, what Gilbert Arenas wrote might just be another one of those SportsCenter moments that athletes are fond of.

For we've seen apologizes aplenty from high-profile athletes - from men like Mike Tyson, Kobe Bryant, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Donte Stallworth, Michael Vick, and we all know that, at some point, we will see Tiger Woods producing his camera-ready moment. It will, of course, come with the appropriate tears and the maudlin words penned by Tiger's agent to give humanity to his client's serial infidelity.

But Tiger and Tyson and none of the other athletes gone wild are what interest me this day. Besides, a few of them have already fallen on their swords in hopes of being forgiven. I'm sure some people have forgiven, knowing that nobody's life is absent flaws.

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Story of the Year? Only Tiger can be No. 1

Sports editors called steroids the biggest story of 2009. Theirs, of course, was an intriguing choice last week, but it was a choice that, frankly, seemed out of step with the prevailing trend.

For the steroids story is as passé as disco dancing and polyester bell-bottoms. Steroids might have been a headline-grabber, oh, two or three years ago, but at this point in a tale of sports figures' going bad, the story doesn't resonate; it's a tired report that soon will have its eulogy read.

In sports and in American pop culture, the story of 2009 was Tiger. Yes, it was the year of the Tiger -- as in golfer Tiger Woods.

What other story proved bigger?

For Tiger's story was a profile of what has been the undoing of sports today: greed and privilege. His story speaks to the entitlements stars have come to demand.

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Tiger, you made a mess of your greatness

My friend has grown weary of the Tiger tale. He's weary of how everybody from the media to the paparazzi to people who don't know golf from Ping-Pong has obsessed over the world's greatest golfer.

He's unwilling, of course, to pardon Tiger's adultery. How could he? He himself is a person of principles, and his principles don't brook behavior of Tiger's kind. Yet my friend has weighed in his mind what his conduct might have been had he been, well ... the world's greatest golfer.

He offers no answer.

"I wish I could pull into town and have 50 women outside my hotel wanting to do anything I wanted them to do," my friend tells me. "The women - the women you dream about having when you were in high school -- they're everywhere."

When you're the world's greatest golfer, these women are everywhere. They are everywhere when you're the world's greatest basketball player or the world's greatest sprinter or the world's greatest cyclist or the world's greatest violinist. The women show up in all the places where a so-called "great" man goes, my friend says.

They have no qualms about a man's marital status or a man's sexual appetite. They will sate that appetite for him - and do whatever else a man might want women to do, my friend says.

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Justice is served: 3 up and 3 down ...

THREE UP …

1. No one expected the Red Sox to remain idle this offseason, and the Sox didn’t. Looking up at the Yankees, the Red Sox needed to fortify their rotation, so they went out and signed free agent John Lackey. With Lackey, Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, the Red Sox have the strongest one-two-three punch in baseball.

2. What am I missing here? Everywhere I hear people talk about history and the importance of the Colts and the Saints going 16-0. But the only history worth making will come in February. Win the Super Bowl, and that’s the history that matters. Nothing else does.

3. Jake, Jake, Jake! Can you believe Washington quarterback Jake Locker, a surefire No. 1 pick, decided to stay in college instead of going into the NFL draft and collecting millions? Locker will hear people second-guess his decision, but he realized what others didn’t: He’s having a ball in college, so why give it up just yet?

THREE DOWN …

1. Call it the Tiger Woods effect, but advertising experts are wondering aloud if companies will ever again pour millions into having a celebrity’s name on their products. Image is everything; it always has been. A tarnished image has little value to marketers and corporate giants. A good-guy image can unravel quickly when infidelity, thuggish behavior or drug abuse attaches itself to an athlete’s persona.

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Justice is served: 3 up and 3 down ...

THREE UP ...

1. I took a few days to sift through my thoughts on the Heisman Trophy. As I applaud Mark Ingram for winning the award, I'm still struck that one game catapulted him to the front of the Heisman class. But no reason to question worthiness, because excellence is in the eye of the beholder. Ingram surely is an athlete who had a great season -- the greatest of 2009? Let history judge that.

2. Turner Gill, the former Nebraska star, has gotten his chance. He's moved from Buffalo, a dead-end job if any existed, to a bigger program at Kansas. Now, Kansas isn't the best place in the world to coach football, but it's a lot better than most places black coaches end.

3. Agent-speak is interesting to listen to, particularly when the agent doing the speaking is named Scott Boras. At the Winter Meetings last week, he was telling teams that his client Matt Holliday was more versatile than Jason Bay, two outfielders on the free-agent market. Boras might be right, but Bay surely will be the better buy. Regardless, both he and Holliday should come away with nice paydays.

THREE DOWN ...

1. Quit ... Randy Moss? C'mon, Chris Gamble! Randy Moss would never quit, would he? I don't know if there's a worse thing a player can say about an opponent than he quit, and if Gamble, the Panthers defensive back, is right, Moss owes fans and his Patriots teammates an apology. To give up in a game is to give up on your team, and no coach or teammates or fans should ever find comfort in that.

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Justice is served: 3 up and 3 down ...

THREE UP ... 1. Can't wait to see middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik back in the ring. His absence hasn't helped the sweet science -- nor Kelly's bank account. There are big-money paydays out there for good fighters, and tough guy like Pavlik (aka "The Ghost"), sidelined 10 months with a string of injuries, should scoop up some of it. So news that he'll be fighting Miguel Espino on Dec. 19 is something to applaud.

2. I have a friend who lives and dies with the Raiders, so he has to be pleased that Bruce Gradkowski, the AFC Player of the Week, has emerged as the team's quarterback of the future. NFL teams have had their hits and misses at that position in recent years, so maybe instead of wasting No. 1 picks on quarterbacks, teams might be wiser to follow what the Raiders did: look for somebody else's discard. Who wouldn't take "Grad" over JaMarcus Russell, Matt Leinart or Brady Quinn?

3. I'm betting freshman John Wall will do a 'Melo Anthony: play one season in college, win a NCAA title and then head to the NBA. In this early hoops season, Wall has been as solid as the Great Wall and hotter than a wall of fire. There might be a better freshman than Wall, but he hasn't shown himself yet. Enjoy looking at this "great" Wall in "Bluegrass Country" while you can.

THREE DOWN ... 1. Some crooner once sang about fools falling in love, but someone also should have sang about how fools act like fools, as Greg Baker, the executive director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, did when he signaled that the museum will jettison the figure who helped build the institution. Essentially, Baker slammed the museum's front door in the face of Buck O'Neil.

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Justice is served: 3 up and 3 down ...

THREE UP ... 1. No mistakes this time. Notre Dame seems to have it right, even if school officials aren't holding a broad search that would be more inclusive than this one was. But the ready candidate the Irish and their faithful thought they had (Urban Meyer) before hiring Charlie Weis is there for the taking this time, and if Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly is their man, the football program will be better for it. While I'm not somebody who cheers for the Fighting Irish (not even when they play Michigan), I know that college football is always better when Notre Dame is good, not bad.

2. Where have you gone, Tiger? Once the TV face of cars and razor blades, Tiger Woods has disappeared from the airwaves in the wake of stories about his promiscuous lifestyle. He's bedded more cocktail waitresses than the late Wilt Chamberlain -- or so it seems. The last time one of Tiger's ads appeared on TV was Nov. 29, Bloomberg News reported. And if the self-righteous, petty, whiny and immoral golf star doesn't appear ever again, TV viewers will not miss him. Good riddance to Tiger-mania -- finally! Please give us Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer back.

3. The reigning king of home runs -- or is he the king of steroids abuse? -- is hanging up his maple bat. Good riddance! See you later, Barry Bonds? Don't book a hotel room in Cooperstown anytime this century. Between you, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, nobody did more damage to the game's integrity on the field than they did. Now off the field, commissioner Bud Selig's behind all the trouble there.

THREE DOWN ... 1. So, the authorities in New York don't want to give inmate Plaxico Burress, the former New York Giants star, a break, eh? I guess I understand their position in denying him work release, which one assistant district attorney said would send "a very bad message." But what's such a bad message about letting a non-violent offender out of an overcrowded jail early? Burress' real crime is stupidity, and stupidity shouldn't merit two years in prison, should it? His is a punishment that simply doesn't fit the crime.

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3 up and 3 down of the world of sports ...

THREE UP ...

1. Not that Tony Dungy's criticism of the NCAA had a bearing on it, but let's applaud Louisville for its decision to hire Florida defensive coordinate Charlie Strong as its head coach. Strong had played a central role in Urban Meyer's success with the Gators, and he should have been a candidate to run a program long before now. He's got a challenge ahead of him at Louisville, but the Cardinals have been a winning program in years past. Strong could have easily been offered, oh, a program with no chance of winning -- in this century or the next.

2. Not sure why the Tigers are trying to unload Curtis Granderson, but I have to admit it will be a wonderful deal for the Yankees, if not an outright betrayal to Tigers fans. Now, I'm not Yankees fan, no matter how much I try to understand the organization. You can't but salute a team for not wanting to stand pat. Bold teams like the Yankees make bold moves, and this was, if it goes through, a bold move that will make the Yankees younger, faster and better. Can anybody say World Series champs, 2010?

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