ORLANDO, Fla. -- Forget the facts, which are bad enough. The conjecture has been even more damning and unsettling.
Yet, of all the teeth-grinding, eye-popping and ear-grating noise out there on the speculative front, here's some forward-looking semi-guesswork that on its face seems even more incredible. At least, initially.
In a blink, Tiger Woods wrapped a Cadillac around a tree. Wrapping your head around this notion might require a bit more time.
To some, the mortal sins Woods has confessed to are as unseemly as they are unforgivable. But social observer Robert Thompson believes some of the commentators and critics, armed with long-range scopes on our sniper rifles, have it all wrong.
After watching the affair play out, he believes that Woods will emerge from this episode with more fans than ever.
"As cynical as it sounds, it has humanized what appeared to be this way-too-perfect robot," Thompson said.
Personally, that sentiment seems more twisted than the path Woods' SUV took from his driveway into the aforementioned tree. But the evidence suggests it has academic merit.
Thompson is the oft-cited director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse, which makes him something of a cultural anthropologist, a guy who gets paid to observe both the media and its public. He tracks social ebb and flow, which would certainly include the brackish flotsam and jetsam associated with this disaster.
"I think it has attracted people who hadn't discovered Tiger Woods to have an interest in him," Thompson said. "It's not like the O.J. thing. He was accused of killing somebody. Michael Jackson was accused of all of those indiscretions with kids.
"This is one of those things that some people will find completely forgivable, and in some odd way, some of them will take an elbow-in-the-ribs attitude about it. If he was the star of a Disney preschool show, that might be a different story.
"I think a lot of the 'this-is-going-to-ruin-everything' sentiment is overstated."
It won't ruin everything for everybody, obviously. As far as the makeup of the Woods fan base, he might have swapped a John Birch demographic for the John Daly crowd. Burp.
Not to minimize what he has done, but it would be typical of Woods to emerge with more fans than before. Based on America's social register in these things, most of those who revered him will eventually forgive, and more fans than ever will empathize with his fallibility. Those who don't? Maybe they'll buy tickets to root against him.
Besides, shocking as they seem at the moment given Woods' image, Thompson reiterated that the allegations aren't exactly earth-shattering compared to the misdeeds of others.
"It's not so much the distance that Tiger Woods fell, compared to the norm, it's just that he was so far up above everybody else [to start with]," Thompson said. "As far as scandals go, this doesn't place. If he had been driving drunk, that would have been a bigger scandal, or if he had injured other people. The biggest scandal outside of the adultery is that he wouldn't talk to police.
"So, as far as bad behavior of rich and famous people, this is nothing. What makes it unique is the stratosphere to begin with."
The rapidity of the descent was shocking even to Thompson, who monitors the media about as closely as any scholarly type in America. This issue will doubtlessly be a classroom topic for years to come.
"The No. 1 thing has been the speed," he said. "You sat down and started your Thanksgiving salad, and by the time you had dessert, the world had changed."
The best way for Woods to put a blow-out patch on the damage is to win again as quickly as possible. Woods might face more pressure in that regard than ever, but there's no reason to believe his physical performance will be affected by the scandal.
"The thing about Tiger Woods in the end is that he did something better than any other human being has done," Thompson said. "If he can continue to do that, to play like he has in the past, a lot of this stuff will ultimately go away."
As for the state of his mental toughness going forward, well, he was apparently involved with a busload of women at once and it never affected his play. Which brings us to another potential audience.
The jugglers.
"You know, for probably a couple of million guys out there," Thompson said, "Tiger Woods is now someone they feel a lot closer to."
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