WILBON: Skeptics aside, Tiger’s apology seemed thorough and sincere

February 20, 2010 at 12:10a.m.

We analyze everything now, studying the videotape for the slightest flaws and hints that may or may not suggest the end of the world as we know it. The most dramatic example of this has been the Tiger Woods sex scandal, every detail of which has been examined to the extreme, or to the absurd.

And while it’s difficult for me to imagine anything a golfer says should command the attention of the three major networks, the Tiger Woods apology Friday was pretty powerful stuff.

I’m in that camp, albeit a small one, that believes Tiger’s infidelities — anybody’s infidelities — aren’t my business and aren’t yours either, and that all these people who seem to feel they are owed some kind of apology aren’t owed a darn thing. But now even Tiger seems to have moved out of that camp, because his 13-minute apology was about as thorough and as sincere as any reasonable person without an agenda could hope to hear.

I was struck by a great many things during his talk, two more than everything else. First, he owned up to the thing that brings down more public figures, specifically more great athletes, than anything: a sense of entitlement. It’s not often you hear people say, even after they’ve been brought to their knees by whatever transgressions, “I thought the rules didn’t apply to me. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted. ... I felt I was entitled, thanks to money and fame.”

And second, therapy apparently has helped him see his sexual indulgence as the larger problem of getting away from the core values he learned from his mother and father as a kid.

“I want to start living a life of integrity,” he said. He then made a special apology to all the parents and children he has disappointed, parents he knows “used to point to me as a role model.”

There are skeptics who will say Tiger Woods was simply reading from a script. One of my colleagues on ESPN even said Tiger appeared too perfect while delivering his controlled message. What, he wanted Tiger to butcher the language and show up look unshaven and disheveled? What would that accomplish other than to give more fodder to the moralists who act as if Tiger’s philandering was the first behavior of its kind?

Personally, I wasn’t expecting an apology quite that wide-ranging, quite that specific, quite that self-critical and quite that exposing. He seemed sorry for putting his wife and family and friends through the drama that has unfolded since Thanksgiving weekend. And for the people who felt he should have spoken weeks ago, perhaps they should consider Tiger might not have had this kind of remorse weeks ago. Maybe he had to get to this point, with the help of therapy, before understanding the havoc he wreaked.

A big part of what I do for a living is ask people questions. Tiger didn’t take any Friday, for which he is being roasted by a great many people in the business of asking questions. As an academic matter, I understand. As a practical matter, I don’t care about the exact number of women Tiger slept with, or about any of the other titillating stuff that have kept the tabloids buzzing.

Tiger said rather emphatically his wife Elin, despite reports, never struck him Thanksgiving night, nor any other night. He said he’s been in therapy for 45 days working on his issues. We know how he feels: like he let the entire world down, starting with his wife and mother.

The big, big question still hanging out there — and let’s just be selfish about this — is when he’ll play golf again. And it didn’t sound to me like Tiger Woods will be at Augusta National in April. It sounded, when he talked about becoming balanced and centered again, not following impulses and using restraint, that he wants to be a different person than he’s been in recent years. That doesn’t sound like he’s thinking of himself first as a golfer, which is how most of us think of him.

While a great many of the people following this are still titillated by the number of paramours Tiger had and how he hooked up and whether he’s addicted to sex, it sounds as if he’s determined to atone for what he’s done and become a better man.

For those who don’t find that good enough or revealing enough at this point, well, maybe they have their own issues.

X Michael Wilbon is a columnist for the Washington Post and the co-host of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption.”