Tiger

From Bill Simmons @ ESPN:

With five weeks remaining in the aughts, pre-teens, double zeroes or whatever we end up calling the 2000s, the title for "Biggest Sports Story of the Decade" was up for grabs.

Michael Vick? Tim Donaghy? The Mitchell report? The Artest Melee? Barry Bonds? Pat Tillman? Eagle, Colorado? Roger Clemens? Andre Agassi's admission that he won Wimbledon with a weave?

You could have made a case for any of them.

And then ... Tiger happened.

Game over.

I'm calling it the "Tiger Zoo" instead of "TigerGate," only because we have to break the habit of slapping "gate" after everything. But the Tiger Zoo nailed every gotta-have-it component for a big-time story with legs.

First, it involved one of the most famous living athletes.

Second, it started definitively with a specific incident -- and not just any incident, but something that made us say, "Wait, this seems fishy, I wonder what really happened here ..." and quickly became more complex than we imagined.

Third, it built steam over the next week, crossed into the mainstream and dominated conversations, e-mails and tweets.

Fourth, it transformed our collective perception of a famous person and made us re-evaluate every opinion we had about him.

Fifth, it grew so enormous so quickly that everyone with a forum (radio show, column, blog, whatever) felt obligated to come up with an angle on it.

The whole article, as are all of Bill Simmons' articles, well worth the read.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/091211

Another great ESPN article on Tiger:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4727383