72 hours ago the greatest golfer in the world had to do two things that were the result of the timing of his brilliant career. First he had to publicly acknowledge very private matters, and second, he had to plead with complete strangers to stop taking photos of his children. Almost immediately after he finished talking our 24-hour culture of immediacy began picking everything apart. Was he sincere? Did he come across as contrite? Did he show enough emotion? Was it scripted? Did it seem a tad A-Rodian? For better or worse this is the world we've created; public figures can't make mistakes in peace or be praised without dissenters. Tiger Woods is not the first athlete to step outside of his marriage, and he will certainly not be the last. None of this makes his actions okay but thanks to the worldwide craving for information, Tiger Woods' life is no longer his own. The most private superstar on the planet is now more popular and public than he was on Thanksgiving morning for all the wrong reasons.

While out on Saturday night with a group of friends the conversation eventually turned to Tiger. One guy was indifferent, another said he didn't care, and my friend Mike and I both agreed that following this drama could be considered a guilty pleasure. We don't know why it interests us so much but it does. Tiger Woods came into our lives by blowing the doors off of everyone at Augusta in 1997. From that point on he was universally considered the greatest golfer on Earth. The only thing he has left to do is pass Jack Nicklaus in career majors to indisputably be the greatest golfer of all time. As he continued to dazzle on the course he picked up several endorsement opportunities and was the first professional athlete with a global reach since Michael Jordan. The odd thing was we never knew anything about him outside of some basic information and this is exactly what Tiger wanted. Except his brilliance coincided with the rise of the information age and suddenly this very private figure had no choice but to live a public life.

After his crash and the subsequent fallout we all had questions and none of them were answered. Silence used to be golden but not for Tiger, not in 2010. For 3 months we all pieced together our own conclusions on what happened that night. Reckless reporting led to rumors and the silence just let those spin out of control. Suddenly stories about potential plastic surgery thanks to a sand wedge to the face while he was sleeping were being bounced around. All we had were two statements on his website and TMZ to guide our ship. ESPN, CBS and other golf megapowers wouldn't dare go after him with a full court press because the PGA knows how its bread is buttered. So we waited for any kind of actual announcement to emerge. There were reports of sex rehab in Mississippi, that he wasn't staying at his Orlando home, that Elin was going to file for divorce and still nothing but silence came out of Camp Tiger. This all led to the 13 minutes heard around the sports world on Friday morning, when one of the most private superstars in the history of sports addressed his issues to a room of friends, family and a few media members.

In reality there was nothing Tiger could have done to satisfy us on Friday because there is no quenching the thirst for information anymore. He could have gone through every one of his liaisons in excruciating detail, given the exact day that he's coming back to golf, talked openly about the things he's been doing in rehab and let us know exactly where he and Elin stand but it wouldn't have been good enough. We don't need to know any of this but public figures are more interesting than Average Joes so we want to know everything even though its none of our business. Imagine if Michael Jordan's retirement on the heels of his father's murder at the peak of his game happened in this era. How much digging would people do into MJ's life to get the dirt they wanted? What if OJ's trial of the century had wild internet coverage? Would Kato have started a blog? Tiger's behavior was inexcusable: he went from on top of the world to in front of it for a joyless and painful 13 minutes where his own Mother sat there and watched her son talk about infidelity and the mistakes he made. Can we really argue that this kind of ordeal is a good thing? Information is a wonderful thing but how much is too much? You can play the spoiled athlete/he did this to himself card but if you feel that way I'm not sure why you hold his personal life up to the same standards as his golf game. Success on the field/course/court is mutually exclusive to the off-field life an athlete leads. We loved Tiger because of the things he does on Sunday afternoons, not because we wish he was our uncle.

So now we wait for Tiger to reappear again fresh out of rehab with a new look at life. We look forward to Jim Nantz telling us Tiger is surging on the back nine and closing in on a weak-kneed opponent but all of it carries a cloud of sadness now. If we never knew about any of this the stories of greatness could continue until he passes Jack. Now the Tiger Woods story will always include a footnote about his personal life. When we talked about Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan its always about the things they achieved as athletes but never about their shortcomings away from the sports they dominated. Tiger doesn't have this luxury; he came along and dominated our 24/7 news cycle universe and now we know more about him than we ever should have. His legacy is forever changed and several thousand non-golf fans will remember him for 13 awkward minutes last Friday rather than his miraculous chip on 16 at Augusta in 2005. Tiger can never just be an awesome golfer again even though that's the only reason he was such a superstar to begin with. His off course actions are indefensible, which gives something in common with the people chasing after his kids with a camera. Whatever the future holds for Tiger it will never be the same; we're all absorbed with the destruction of his once squeaky clean legacy and in this day in age there's no slowing down just keeping pace without stopping to think if its even worth it.