It is the single most favorable decison ever granted to an NCAA team, giving an obvious unfair competitive advantage with blessing, as a reward for going through an awful chapter involving a lying hooker and an aggressive, politically-motivated DA. And, oh yeah, reporters like Sports Illustrated’s, ex-New York Times writer, Selena Roberts, who jumped on the throats of the Duke “privileged” and stood up for women everywhere as a loud mouth who was wrong and never apologized.

Duke sent 17 seniors out to eke an overtime win and its first national championship against Notre Dame. A just reward by “lacrosse society” and the NCAA, who granted the extra year of eligibility concession with little debate. The perception was that the bogus charges ruined the pretty good lives of Reade Seligman, Colin Finnerty and David Evans and punished the rest of the team when Duke president Richard Brodsky cancelled the remainder of the 2006 season. So the lacrosse powers-that-be and the NCAA, doled out and granted rewards to make everything right.

As it turned out, Finnerty played well in a tough overtime loss in a tournament game for Loyola of Maryland against Cornell, while Seligman played and graduated at Brown and Evans toiled on Wall Street. All three have allegedly profited from wrongful prosecution lawsuits, while Mike Pressler, the Duke coach at the time, who was discarded, without so much as an inkling of support from such good and powerful friends as Mike Kryzewski, was named head coach of the 2010 U. S. World Team.

Making everything right for a team that still engaged in a “traditional” end-of-spring-break-week party, at the captain’s off-campus house that brought the police. Complete with underaged drinking and “imported” girls. A national championship for “Blue Devils Gone Wild.”

LeBron

Big news when he talks about where he’ll wind up with Larry King on CNN. David Stern is mad because it takes away friom his marquee matchup in the Finals of Boston at Los Angeles. Still, LeBron remains the biggest non-story-forced-down-our-throats since Brett Favre’s retirement status and the U.S. Soccer team.

Cleveland can pay him the most, has shown commitment to surround him with talent and its home. Leaving Cleveland could also mark him as a quitter and change an area that now reveres him into one that detests his grand opinion of himself. The Los Angeles Clippers would allow him to rub elbows with the stars, and play with a loaded, youthful, rudderless team. But there’s Donald Sterling, the Clipper’s owner, the standard for ineptitude, who serves as the sterling standard of bumbling, for Knicks owner, James Dolan.

Chicago gets a lot of play in the speculation, but Jerry Reinsdorf has a horrible track record with Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. He’s cheap and not beyond eventually turning his back on loved ones. Why go there?

New York, it is becoming clear, is too hot to handle. There would be money and endorsements and adoration and there is a need for the NBA to get stronger despite all of David Stern’s claims otherwise. Putting a winner in New York could revitalize the league and put LeBron’s historic stamp on it in the way that Larry and Magic pulled it out of the “cocaine years.” New York is also the best springboard to the rest of the world, something LeBron could easily conquer if “Team LeBron” is something more than a collection of talent that specializes in “low hanging fruit.”

The Knicks can only pay and the Nets can only pray. They can’t serve up a team and guarantee championships. And then there’s the phenomenon of James Dolan, perhaps the most inept owner since Ted Stepian. Why would LeBron want to struggle in front of the most sophisticated and critical fans in the game? So that he can glide through the ropes at Marquee? So that he can walk the streets and be heckled by construction workers?

Truth be told, LeBron is a beast, but could be the game’s biggest loser, about to be paid the biggest salary. He’s got seven years on a 25-year old body. Dan Marino, anyone? Charles Barkley? Karl Malone? Alex Rodriguez? None of the teams he’s being courted by qualify as sure-fire winners. Maybe his free agent summit can change that by creating a Survivor-like alliance. But what remains based on his history is that he hasn’t been capable of winning the big one. And that could be a career curse.

Tiger Woods

There have been 23 tournaments played so far and only Ernie Els has repeated, both times on the Florida swing, at Doral and Bay Hill. 23 tournaments and 22 different winners. Welcome to your new world, Tiger Woods. Yes, Tiger is now a member of the pack. He could rise up like any of the other guys and win a tournament, but his days of domination are over.

He struggles with his swing like the rest of them, not knowing what will show up week-to-week. His new spot is as the most popular golfer on tour, not it’s best, and certainly not both, as it has been for years. The pressures have hit in his head like all the others. He now has doubts. He thinks too much. He frustrates and worries. He alters his swing. He doesn’t have the world on a string anymore. He wonders what people are thinking and what his family is doing. It’s pretty certain he’s lost that edge. Welcome to the pack, Tiger.

As people make a big thing out of Haney resigning as Tiger’s swing coach, it becomes clear how golf writers don’t have a clue about the game they cover. People go to “swing gurus” to get an objective third-party opinion about how to improve their golf swing. The most significant thing to keep in mind is that the swing you come in with is the usually the one you leave with. That the student often knows more about the swing than the teacher and that the pursuit “of making yourself even better,” is as elusive as the game itself.

The coach observes and makes minute, fine adjustments. When the suggestions work, as they did, 37 of 71 times, during the six years Woods and Haney were together, there is a credibility build up. The “swing thoughts” that Haney fed Tiger seemed to be helping. But as all golfers know, swing thoughts are fleeting. What both Tiger and Hank knew, as well as Tiger’s old coach, Butch Harmon, is that it always comes to an end.

My weekend in McKinney was action-packed. I paid Hank something around $300 an hour and then elected to go to his right hand man, Tim Cusick, who was a more managable $80 an hour. After Hank watched me swing at his golf ranch in a converted stable, he introduced “wrist cock’ to my swing and began a process of manually pulling my golf club through the swing he wanted. You could say that at that time, Hank and I were very close. I wasn’t wearing a watch, but the one hour he put in on my bill seemed short.

Hank handed me off to Cusick, who took me to the old hay loft for a film session. Tim then took me back out to the range where he asked what club, I couldn’t hit. I chose the five iron and most of our work the remainder of the weekend was with that club in my hand.

At the time, Cusick was known to fill in for Hank with the reknowned clients. Tiger’s golf-buddy, Mark O’Meara was a primary client. I’ve always believed that it was that connection that led Tiger to Hank.

Cusick worked every aspect of my game, foremost trying to make me hit that five iron the “Haney way,” and then allowing me to pull the other clubs from my bag. He watched me on the practice putting green, he took me to the chipping and pitching range, and then he handed me off to Rob Oosterhuis, an aspiring teaching pro and the son of Peter. Rob was more like $30 an hour.

For four days I became a fixture at Mr. Haney’s. Each day included at least one paid hour with my instructor, by Sunday I was exclusively with Rob and impressing the Haney staff with my tireless work ethic. At one point, they loaded me onto a golf cart that had a plastic garbage pail loaded with range balls and allowed me to go to the far side of the range and hit back toward the old horse structure. I emptied the garbage can.

On that side of the range were the real Haney people. It seemed like the whole Kuehne family, the first family of Dallas golf, was there. Somebody said that O’Meara had flown in Monday morning after crapping out at the Palmer at Bay Hill. The Northwestern University golf team was there, on a Texas spring training swing, including their top player Luke Donald. Mike Cofer, the former NFL kicker and nearby McKinney neighbor, worked the Haney front desk in trade for practice time.

By Monday, I had learned that my swing had a natural tendency to come over the top. I cut or sliced the ball naturally. When I used the Haney method correctly, I hit all my clubs farther and straighter than I had ever. I just couldn’t do what Tiger also wanted to do, to make the swing repetitive. I could not stop myself from going back to my natural swing.

During my last hours on the ranch, I saw a guy who had been hitting in a space next to me, slowly walk up and slump down on a bench that stood outside the door to the Haney golf shop and retail center. I asked if he was alright and walked inside to report the emergency, surprised to see Hank on campus. Hank took charge and I meandered out to the main road to help guide the ambulance directly toward the fallen golfer. When he was raced away, I wondered whether I should get back to working on my game, maybe even play the little nine-hole Pete Dye design a few steps away, to apply my new shots.

After hours of practice, of incorporating small adjustments to my swing and hitting literally thousands of golf balls, I concluded it was time for me to leave Hank Haney. I was panicked, starting to feel the wear, and regressing with my progress. The weekend was over. I paid my bill (something around $700) and left. I think I know a little bit how Tiger feels.

The stories out this week were about a possible $500 million divorce and a phone call during the Masters from Elin about the little girl next door in Windemere. Apparently, of the hundred of possibilities that Tiger tested with his libido, his trysts with this little girl hurt the most. Do I hear “babysitter” in the complaint? That’s a healthy category on most porn sites.

The first focus has to go to a guy that thinks he’s entitled to having carnal knowledge with a multitude of gals. The second goes to that libido, seemingly schooled by a well-rounded porn site. His tastes and sense of entitlement conjures mind-turning images of Rick Pitino, his pants around his ankles, atop an assistant’s wife on a dining table at a closed restaurant, with an assistant standing by. Or Ben Roethlisberger with everything hanging out, if you know what I mean, in a barracaded barroom backroom. As athletes these guys rule the roost. As seductors, their skills are a bit underdeveloped.

Elin also has a part in this. She stands to make $500,000,000 for having two kids. Not bad work if you can get it. For those who compare her to Leonardo’s Bar Rafaeli or Tom Brady’s Gisele Bundchen, better think more of a Swedish herring laying on Tiger’s bed. I’ll admit that she out smokes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s wife, but something was brewing at home between Elin and Tiger, long before he felt entitled to 100 women.

He’s certainly disturbed about losing the two kids and his mother’s respect and some endorsements and adulation that his “James Bond lifestyle” rocked. The money loss will only make him average, although half a billion is a good starting place to add another 20 years of earnings. But that may not be the assumption. Think Tiger Woods as David Duval.

Thusfar, there have been no changes to his team. He’s also got an awful plan for trying to get back to winning. Sitting out in a shitstorm for five months, manipulating the media with programmed announcements coordinated by George Bush’s media strategist. Skipping Tavistock and the Arnold Palmer which would have helped kick the rust. Returning to Augusta where he felt protected and showed pretty well. More time off until soiling himself at Quail Hollow. Calling Hank Haney. Mr. Haney, please. Calling Hank Haney!

Skipping events and hand-picking his appearances won’t work. He needs to play, with real players and struggle through the four rounds like the real players. But the the braintrust has other plans. And Tiger has forgotten how to be “one of the guys.” Perhaps he should call David Duval.

1. You don’t own him.
Despite the fact that he’s in the public domain, wants you to buy products and plays in a “major league” where somehow fans get the notion that they “pay his salary,” it’s really not true. The way golf is set up, corporate sponsors do the most. Fans attention on television helps build a gigantic amount of money, but even with the spikes in viewership when he plays, he tends to control the situation, not the fans. Despite his mea culpas and apologies, he doesn’t owe us anything.

2. Here’s a platform for the ‘holier than thou.’
In our biopartisan world where half the folks are red and half are blue, it’s very fashionable to point it out when one on the other side falters. It’s called ‘schadenfrede’ or ‘schadenfreud,’ where some people get a big kick out of other people’s failures. So we have a bunch of bad golfers, people who can’t do anything as well as Tiger golf’s, folks that don’t like racial differences, the ‘have-nots’ who haven’t earned a billion dollars, etc. And Tiger’s struggle makes those that are infinately inferior feel better. It doesn’t mean that some are entitled to ‘cast the stones’ because they haven’t strayed.

3. Let’s count his money.
For those resentful of the spoils of being the world’s richest athlete, there is the pasttime of calculating all the money Tiger Woods has lost. Somehow keeping score this way puts Tiger in his place. Well, so let’s see…he’s been golfing and winning and being sponsored and paid since he turned pro in 1996 in Milwaukee. So he’s banked 13 or 14 years of winnings and sponsors fees. Only his wife can take any of that away and in most places it would never exceed half. He lost several sponsors following his after-Thanksgiving “drive.” He still maintains several. Any way you add it up he’s set. He’s 34 and the senior tour starts when you are 50. He’s surrounded and advised by “Team Tiger” and there doesn’t seem to be a Madoff or Stanford among them. Somehow, I don’t think Tiger thinks for second, that it’s about the money.

4. The “Buddy Fantasy.”
Somehow people think they are going to walk up as a single at some golf course in America and Tiger Woods and his buddy Noah Begay, or Mark O’Meara are going to to stroll up and say “mind if we join, ya?” That has about as much a chance of happening as a Republican complimenting Obama. Despite the universal feeling that golf is a “arms wide open” game, your chances of being Tiger’s buddy are about as strong as my short game.

5. Beware of false prophets.
When the leaders of the hoopla are people like Gloria Allred or one of those Simple Minds from “Extra” or “Access Hollywood” you’ve got to dig deeper for your own opinion. “All Dread” is an appropriate name for a lawyer who scoops up anyone with some financial leverage and then cooks backroom deals to fill their pockets. Of course, she does it in the name of preventing discrimination, protecting rights and the constitution, but she’s getting 30% or more. Ms. Allred has allegedly already fronted for several Tiger mistresses. TV tabloiders like Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson and Maria Menounos head the anti-misogynist movement to tell us how bad a man Tiger is (or Charlie Sheen, Jesse James, et al) for workin’ it outside the bedroom. “Why, they would kick them right out,” the tabloid prophets yodel without a thought to ages of adultery, divorce, therapy and the complexity associated with the issue.

6. People with sex lives, should live in glass houses.
Before anyone steps up to wax morally about Tiger’s foibles, let them be perfectly free of any sexual interlude, whether it be Tiger’s type, the closet type, the regrettable type, the lapsed type, the alone type, or the experimentation type.

7. Tiger’s Not going To Like This, But Elin’s an 8.
She’s got that Swedish Suntan Team look, but there are spaces between teeth, meat lacking from bones, and curves lacking from her bust and butt. Many of her photos are “professional” and must meet her approval. She often looks a bit “washed out.” In some pictures, she’s a ten. In other’s she could anchor the defense with Niklas Lidstrom. She is a Nordic beauty, but even Nordic beauties can resemble a herring in the bedroom.

8. Michael and Charles Lose a Prodigy.
Michael’s divorced, photographed nightly at discos, gambles like Edward Norton in “Rounders,” and now owns an NBA team. Barkley is married, but must have “an arrangement.” He’s photographed with Jordan and he gambles like Matt Damon in “Rounders.” He’s got himself a cushy TV gig. Barkley’s given up golf, but Jordan hasn’t, so it will be interesting when Tiger next crosses either’s path. By association Mike and Chuck are being whispered as bad influences on Tiger.

9. A New Formula: Twelve Steps and Ari Fleisher.
It was a guy named Bill who invented the 12 steps, but you’ve got to work them for them to work. Tiger seems sincere in wanting Elin and his two kids back in the den. I don’t think Bill intended for you to need a press relations specialist as a thirteenth step. Tiger seems to be trying everything to achieve quick contrition — that place where he’s admitted his sins, and forgiveness is beginning to swell. Good golf and time will heal the rest. Hopefully, Tiger holds tightest onto Bill.

10. He shoots. He Scores.
If he wins, his road back will be easier. When he loses, the fateful facts of Thanksgiving 2009 will somehow connect in the press tent with a misread putt or a wayward drive. Tiger Woods knows this best. If he wins, he’ll gain that control over the press room he has lost. If he loses, more time to answer stupid questions or offend someone if he doesn’t. Score Tiger, score.

First of all, most golfers need about a week to get tuned. Factor in that Tiger is already in pretty good shape, has never wandered too far away from the range or his home course since the day after Thanksgiving and, he’s Tiger Woods. He could play next week. Hank Haney has seen the product and signed off. The only thing left to do is send the plane for Stevie.

Whether he plays privately at Tavistock, at Bay Hill or walks up to Augusta, doesn’t really matter. He’s 34, he’s won 14 majors and Jack Nicklaus has won 18. That’s all you need to know. Why waste an opportunity?

In fact, Tiger seems mostly concerned with the media impact his first appearance will have. He’s hired Ari Fleisher as a consultant. That’s Ari Fleisher, who flacked for the Republican-controlled, most unpopular president in history. Who flacked for the BCS, the NCAA -controlled, most unpopular college sporting event in history. Who advised Mark McGuire, the baseball-legacy controlled, most unconvincing liar in baseball history. Now he’s taking on Tiger, the ego-controlled, most popular manwhore/athlete/corporation in the world.

Here’s a tip Tiger: just do it. Do something that will satisfy those who believe you need to explain and then go play golf. Keep in mind, most people don’t think you need to explain anything, but if Ari thinks its important to address TMZ and the inquiring minds, give them something (“no comment” will be fine to the personal questions) and then go figure out how to stick balls on those Augusta greens.

Tiger still alludes to the void caused with the loss of his pops. This event is probably the place where he could have most used him. Earl was a straight forward guy. A dollar and cents guy. Objective and protective, a say-it-like-it-is ex-military who had the nerve to predict Tiger “bigger than Ali” and call Richard Williams, of Venus and Serena fame, a dope of a father.

You don’t think Earl would have a notebook full of strikes against Stevie Williams? It doesn’t matter how close Stevie says he and Tiger are. It doesn’t matter what the stats and moneylist reads like with Williams on Tiger’s bag. There are other caddies. You’ve got to wonder what Earl would have thought of Stevie’s drivel about not having a clue about Tiger’s dalliances. So you travel with him, stay with him and caddy for him, but you don’t have a clue? And if you did, you would have run right to Elin and taken the lid off a million- dollar-plus-a-year job, private flights to New Zealand, and an identity as a caddy like no other. Wonder what Earl would have thought about that?

On the whole, the first public appearance by Tiger Woods since his morning after Thanksgiving road rally, was a first step. It brought him out of hiding and began a process that will someday have him back on the golf course. No timetable available at this time.

So we will be left with sportsreporters interpreting what he’s going through. The inciteful ones have already jumped on the 12 steps, citing two steps that Tiger alluded to in his comments Friday. Actually, Tiger touched upon several, if not all of the steps. Aside from the two most mentioned after his speech — “a searching and moral inventory of ourselves” and “admitted to god, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,” Tiger admitted he was powerless, that a greater power was needed, he showed a willingness to turn himself over to god, made general and direct amends to those he had harmed, and sought to continue to take personal inventory, to improve, and to carry his message to others.

Through the process, counselors will encourage him to surround himself with supporters and stay away from past enablers. Which probably explains why Charles Barkley complained on ESPN’s “Pardon The Interruption” that Tiger hadn’t called him and had changed his phone numbers. Barkley seemed hurt and expressed that he only wanted what’s best for his “friend.” The good guy in Barkley said he’ll always be there for him. Barkley’s butt-boy Michael Wilbon ate it up, and not one reporter saw Barkley’s appeal for what it was really worth. Being a bad influence.

Charles Barkley is like one of those guys who buys a sportscar to compensate for youth lost. The impression of hanging out with Tiger Woods, Dwayne Wade and Dwight Howard is just the stuff needed for an insecure individual to bolster his 47-year old low self esteem. We already know that we can’t count on him as a role model. He’s a compulsive gambler who allegedly boasts to having lost over $10 million. He owed Wynn Casinos $400,000 that he “forgot about” before he was shamed into a very public payback. He’s had episodes of over drinking and fighting and his most recent DUI, which landed him in the slammer, alledgedly was caused while he pursued an intimate encounter with someone other than his wife. He bounces out of these problems with outspokenness, candor and humor. The boys at TNT can’t get enough of him, but the public has become as tiresome of his ways as they are of his golf swing.

Hanging behind the velvet ropes with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley has now turned just a little bit seedy. It’s not the image Mr. Jordan wants to convey if he wants into the NBA owners club. Hanging with Mr. Barkley, a guy who can’t control his appetite for food, gambling, alcohol and women, isn’t the way to influence the sales of phones or Taco Bell, it’s just a plain bad influence.