Our Long National Crisis is Over: Tiger is Back

These muscles have nothing to do with whether or not you have a perfect golf swing.

If it wasn't for the beginning of March Madness I would have advised you to not turn your TV on to ESPN for the next 48 hours. Tiger Woods has announced his return to golf today and that return will be in April at the Masters in Augusta. His statement, much like his "apology", was very brief and void of any feeling.

Tigers Woods has become one of the top three topics that ESPN devotes a great portion of it's time and energy towards (Brett Favre and Duke being the others). Thank God for the start of the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise we would have been totally inundated with Tiger talk. Not that we still won't be. I am sure it will be the lead story on Sports Center, PTI, Around the Horn, and Outside the Lines.

Where do we go from here? Personally, I could care less about this. Tiger is coming back to do what he gets paid millions of dollars to do which is play golf. Did he cheat on his wife? Yes. Did he cheat on his wife with over 12 women, one of those women being a waitress at the always delicious Perkins restaurant? Yes. We all make mistakes. It's not like he paid for his mistresses abortion or anything (which is completely legal).

All joking and mudslinging aside, it doesn't matter what Woods has done in his personal life unless all of a sudden he becomes less of a golfer. Odds are that Tiger Woods will still break Jack Nicklaus' record for most major championships and he will still go down as one of the greatest golfers to ever live. Has Babe Ruth's image been tarnished for being a drunk womanizer? Has Tye Cobb's records been taken away because he was a racist and an all around jerk? Do we really care that Andre Agassi did drugs? For me the answer to all of these questions is no.

I can understand some of Tiger Woods' sponsors dropping him because they do have a company image to uphold. Nike and Gatorade have stuck by him because they are Nike and Gatorade and they can afford to do it. I am sure that in a few months we will see a Nike add talking about Tiger making mistakes and turning hardships into victory, yadda, yadda, yadda, just like they did when Kobe Bryant was acquitted of rape charges. The PGA will not do anything to Tiger because he didn't break any laws and the PGA is nothing without Tiger Woods, plain and simple.

Unless Tiger cheated in his sport like Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramierez or David Ortiz; or unless he (allegedly) broke laws like Ben Roethlisbereger, Plaxico Burress, Gilbert Arenas, or Pacman Jones, then I'm really not sure what the big deal is. He is getting ready to play golf again. Golfing is what he does. Let him do it and if you want to tune in go for it. If not, there are plenty of other things to watch on TV.

P.S. Sorry to all of the Louisville fans. I couldn't resist taking the shot. ZING!