Media coverage for Tiger is overblown

I was originally going to post this as a comment on another blog but decided to just post it here. It is in response to this post about the coverage of the Tiger story.

I agree with the SI editor in his criticism of TMZ and their tabloid journalism.

One of the most interesting things to recall about the story is that when TMZ published their report about the most outlandish and dramatic version of events, that's the story that everyone chose to believe. Some bigger publications even gave credit to TMZ in reporting on what actually happened.

However, if you'll go back and look, when Gloria Allred canceled her scheduled news conference, TMZ reported the reason was nothing more than Rachel Uchitel deciding not to spread her story b/c she knew it would possibly have negative consequences for those involved. Then, a report came from somewhere else that Allred's daughter said that based on her experience working with her mother in the past, she believed that her client got paid and that's why they dropped the news conference. Yet, the story that was repeated by other websites was the one stating Uchitel was paid by Tiger to not tell her story. That is an example of how this story has been skewed toward the most sensationalized version of events that could have possibly have happened, without regard to whether the reports are true or not. I recall specifically seeing the story on golf.com leading one to believe that it was fact that Uchitel was paid. Meanwhile, TMZ, who previously had everyone believing their incredible version of events,was still reporting she wasn't paid and dropped it merely b/c she wanted to avoid the publicity.

This is Exhibit #A as to why the reporting on this story is nothing more than tabloid exploitation at its worst. Thankfully Tiger, so far as we know, wasn't photographed on a yacht with four nude women, while his wife was at home in the hospital. No, that was just a highly revered former president. I bet Tiger wishes he was just a superstar in basketball like Shaq, who can be at the top of his sport, a highly paid endorser, get caught with other women and have his story ignored.

Watson for President's Cup?

So there's an article, blog posting, editorial, or whatever you want to call it on golf.com in the form of a petition to Fred Couples asking him to pick Tom Watson for the President's Cup. Seriously. Even though the guy a month from 60, and is only competitive on the Champion's Tour a few times a year. Sure, he made for an entertaining British Open, but let's be honest, that was on a course he had won before and knew probably better than anyone else in the field. It was not super long, and being a links course, required a different style of game than any other tournament in the States. And, oh yeah, he didn't win. He couldn't get up and down for par from just off the green on the 72nd hole, and then got embarrassed in the playoff by Stewart Cink.

So, why in the world should he be on the President's Cup team? Are you telling me he should take the place of a much younger player who actually competes on the real tour throughout the entire year? Whoever penned that article for golf.com is taking his fanhood a bit too far in this case in thinking Watson should even be considered for the President's Cup. Let's hope Freddy is smart enough and realistic enough to know picking Tom Watson would make absolutely no sense.

Libel, or Not?

Just a few thoughts on some recent blog postings I ran across. I don't intend for this to be an exhaustive article, nor have I comprehensively researched the issue. I merely want to address the posting at TheBigLead, in which the author, Jason Mcintyre stated that "[O]ur money’s on her jilted ex-boyfriend being somehow connected..." in the Steve McNair case.

I ran across this posting by Spencer Hall, of EDSBS, in his SportingNews column. In it, Hall blasts Mcintyre of TheBigLead, saying his column "totally is" libelous (according to the attorneys he "talked" to). Then, I ran across this post, at deadspin.com, which also heavily criticized TheBigLead, as well as SportsbyBrooks, for expressing their speculations and posting photos of the victims. The author of the deadspin.com post, Tommy Craggs, wrote that Mcintyre's column was "straight-up libel."

Ummm, hold on a sec. Not so sure one can say that the statement definitely was libelous. Generally speaking, for a defamation claim, you must have 1) a false statement, and 2) an injury. Obviously, the imputation of committing a crime can be defamatory if proven false. However, Mcintyre's statement was clearly not intended to be taken as fact. He's merely expressing his opinion that, based on the circumstances, the guy may be involved. Besides, where is the injury? Are you going to tell me this guy suffered public ridicule for some blog posting on the internet that only a few thousand people probably even saw? It seems to me the guy has more things to worry about than some blogger guy speculating on whether he was involved.

My question is, how do Mr. Hall and Mr. Craggs think they are exempt from the very law they accuse another of breaking? Spencer hedged his bets by relying on the advice of others, but the statement on deadspin.com that it was "straight-up libel?" Well, that is arguably false. And, it likely caused injury to Mcintyre by decreasing the readers of TheBigLead. That seems to satisfy the two components of a defamation claim. So, who should "buckle up," TBL for expressing his opinion, or other bloggers for accusing him of defamation?

Now, as a disclaimer, this is not intended as an exhaustive research of the law. While I am a lawyer, I do not practice in New York, where jurisdiction would presumably lie. I am not giving legal advice to anyone, and do not claim to practice regularly in the area. I sure would like to see someone tell me why I'm wrong, though.

Glover Comes Through...

Congrats to Lucas Glover for winning the recent U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. I've always thought he had a lot of game and frankly, he would have been in maybe my top five darkhorses with a chance to win. He's not a flash in the pan, and I seriously doubt he's going to fade away and never win again. Just the opposite, I think he has more wins ahead of him, and will be a very steady player for years to come.

But seriously though, what happened to Tiger's putting? Time after time, he hit quality shots on Sunday and Monday, but kept missing the putts. More often than not, he hit a good putt that was just barely off and wouldn't go in. A few were misreads I guess but especially on Monday they all looked pretty pure. It really seems like he makes those type of putts only when he's leading a tournament as opposed to when he's trailing. Why is that I wonder? Everyone knows he has yet to win coming from behind on the last day of a major. That's quite an odd stat because it's not like he doesn't play well enough to win. It's just that, as we saw last weekend, the must-have putts drop when he's ahead, and don't when he's behind. Kind of strange...

So Tiger Lost...

Well, now it's one day after Tiger lost in his return to the PGA tour after an extended period off for knee surgery. Should it be a surprise that he lost in the second round of match play to Tim Clark? Not really, in my opinion. It's not surprising that he was a little rusty, given the long layoff. The last time he had a long layoff when his father died, he came back and missed the cut in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. It's almost to be expected that he wouldn't be as sharp as he normally is. No matter how much practice and preparation he undertakes, there is no substitute for tournament competition.

In addition, this is simply the downside to match play. Sure, if the favorites make it all the way through, you will have a fantastic final match and a great viewing audience. More often though, upsets happen along the way, and you're left with a less than riveting matchup. It's the simple evolution of the PGA tour, that they've mostly done away with match play competition, and especially in the PGA Championship, which used to be match play at one time. This particular event does usually draw a lot of attention because of the purse size and novelty of the event, but in the end it's asking a lot for it to always produce the best matchups toward the end.

Tiger will regroup after this I'm sure, and will most likely still have a very productive year. My opinion, at least two majors this year. Even given his time off, no one else has exactly stepped up to the role of consistent challenger to his #1 world ranking.

The General at UGA?

A week or so ago, head basketball coach Dennis Felton was fired by the University of Georgia. Recent speculation, fueled by this column by Furman Bisher in the AJC, is that one Bobby Knight may be interested in the Georgia position. Would he be a good fit? My opinion: No way Georgia should even contact him. Bobby Knight has solidified his position as the biggest jerk in college basketball, maybe in all of sports. At Indiana and later at Texas Tech, he created unnecessary distractions more than a few times. However you want to characterize his dismissal from IU, his stint there involved famous temper tantrums, such as throwing chairs across the floor in a spat with an official, and allegedly even punching one of his players. The thing with Knight is, it's always about him, in that he acts like he's better than everyone else and can't stand being challenged. One of his more notable lines was directed toward a room of reporters questioning him, when Knight reportedly said "all of us learn to write in the second grade, but most of us move on to better things." Who would say that and still expect people to respect him? As a GA fan, I believe the school is too great of an institution to bring somebody like this on as head coach. We have no need for the sideshow he would create, and the embarrassment he would cause to the school. One opinion I've heard is that "the good outweighs the bad" with regard to Knight. My question is, why should GA even have to consider a coach with "bad" characteristics. There are plenty of coaches out there who could improve the program and not bring a bad attitude along with them. As for who that coach may be, I don't know, but the proven formula is to look at a coach of a mid-major conference team that goes deep into the NCAA tournament. It's as simple as that. That coach has to be out there somewhere, and I'm going on record as saying hiring Bobby Knight would be a terrible move for the University of Georgia.

Fitzgerald not deserving of praise?

Here's something interesting we haven't seen reported anywhere else for some reason. Thanks to SportsbyBrooks for reminding us of the domestic violence allegations against Larry Fitzgerald made by the mother of his child. So far as I can tell, there are no criminal charges, but she has sought and received a restraining order against Fitzgerald in the last month or so. Some of the allegations from the Petition:

"Nazario [the former gf] claims that Fitzgerald “grabbed me by my hair with both hands on the back of my head very very hard and tossed me across the room,” and that when she tried to leave he “grabbed the back of my neck and slammed me down on the marble floor.”

Wow. Sounds like pretty serious stuff to me. It is pretty interesting that it hasn't gotten more attention in the mainstream media. Of course, since it's not a criminal matter, nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. However, for a restraining order, it generally does have to be shown beyond a preponderance of the evidence. My guess is that Fitz likely consented to the entry of this order so as to avoid her testifying and there being a record for the media to peruse.

Makes me wonder, again, why the case involving Michael Vick and dogfighting inflamed the public so much, when a story like this gets little to no attention. True, this is just one person's version, but even before Vick plead guilty he faced enormous criticism and outrage. Does the public really think dogfighting allegations are worse than slamming a woman's face on the floor?

Also, see this PFT story from when it was first reported.

Roger Clemens' interesting pregame ritual

Here's a story that was too good not to share. If you're looking for another reason to dislike Roger Clemens, here it is. Apparently, in the new book by Joe Torre, there is a story from one of the Yankee trainers revealing that before important playoff starts, Clemens would have the trainer rub liniment on his balls before the game. Ummm, I know the locker room is supposedly a pretty weird place that's different from the real world, but that's got to be the weirdest thing I've ever heard about. The simple question is, why couldn't he just do it himself, rather than getting the trainer to do it?

Andruw Jones slides even further toward irrelevancy

Latest news on Andruw Jones I found is this nugget that he quit the winter ball team he was playing for. Believe it or not, he was apparently hitting only a woeful .148 during his time there. Of course, this comes after the recent announcement from the Dodgers that they had agreed to release him in exchange for Andruw agreeing to defer a portion of his salary. Now, I don't have the time nor energy to do a lot of digging into this, but it seems to me that was basically the Dodgers cutting a player for poor performance. Where is the benefit to Andruw? He still had (I think) around $12 million left on his contract. He's not going to that anywhere else next year for sure. The only reason I could see is that he really didn't want to be playing in Los Angeles. I don't believe that either though, because there is no way he'd give up $10 million dollars just to try to sign with another team.

Of course, one option for Andruw may be re-signing with the Braves. Not really sure what to think of this one. On one hand, Andruw has just shown nothing over the past two years to even resemble a major league player. Two years ago for the Braves he was automatic out in the middle of the lineup, which of course was impossible to get around. On the other hand, the drop in his production has been so precipitous it makes you wonder if there's any fix out there. I mean, we all know he was productive at one point. What's to say he can't be productive again? He's only 31 yrs old at this point and hit 51 HR's in 2005. Was it just the pressure of the free agent year in 2007 that led to the dropoff? Was it just poor conditioning? Those are things that can be fixed if he puts his mind to it. My guess, which I haven't read anywhere else, is that maybe Andruw has some serious mental issues going on, like depression or related illness. There doesn't appear to be any physical reason, and I can't believe that he's not a competitive enough person to put 100% effort into his career at this point.

I tend to agree with Dave O'Brien writing for the AJC who believes re-signing Andruw to a small deal with incentives would be a good idea. Give him another chance and let's see how it works out. If he truly wants to keep playing of course. It wouldn't surprise me at this point if he considered early retirement.