Coach’s Corner

Tiger Woods is not the first professional athlete to cheat on his spouse, though he may be the most famous. Golf’s billion-dollar man has a Q factor that is in rarified air. Only a few human beings in the history of the world can relate to Tiger’s life – Muhammed Ali, Michael Jordan… I go blank after that.

So Tiger, like all the professional athletes that came before and after him is human, just like the rest of us. Professional athletes, Wall Street financiers, teachers and businessmen, right down to the fast-food workers and ditch-diggers have to make countless choices each and every day. These choices range from the mundane (“do you want fries with that?”) to the extremely difficult (job change, handling the estate of a loved one).

I try to teach my kids that all these choices, from small to large, have consequences – the bigger the decision, the larger the consequence for making the wrong one. For example, if a child on my team decided the night before a big game to stay up all night playing video games, it not only might have an adverse affect on his or her performance, but in turn it could conceivably cost the team an opportunity to win. That choice, like most choices, has consequences beyond the individual making the decision and can adversely affect the people around the decision-maker.

Make no mistake about it, Tiger made a choice. He stood up and announced to all the world that he was choosing this one woman, forsaking all others, to spend the rest of his life with. He is not only a professional golfer, he is a son, a husband and a father of two children. He made a choice to ignore his commitment and in doing so is now experiencing the consequences. Unfortunately, he is not the only one that this choice has touched. His wife, mother, children and sponsors will all be affected, as well as the millions of fans and kids that look up to him. I hope that in time he can repair the damage that he has done to his family, his life and his reputation.

Earlier this year, another professional athlete made a poor choice. Similar to Tiger, this man was married and cheating on his wife. Similar to Tiger, this man’s poor choices changed forever the lives of the people around him, the people who loved him most. However, unlike Tiger, this man will never have the opportunity to repair the damage that his poor decisions have caused.

Steve McNair died on July 4, 2009 after being shot multiple times by his mistress, who then turned the gun on herself and committed suicide. Steve left behind a wife, children, and countless fans to wonder why such a tragic event had to happen. Steve McNair was 36 years old.

There was no difference between the choice that Tiger Woods made and the choice that Steve McNair made. The only difference was the severity of the consequences. Unfortunately, we rarely get to choose the consequences of our actions, only how we respond to them. If we can teach our children one thing from this incident, it should be that when we make a conscious decision to do something that we know is wrong, we have to not only be aware of what the consequences could be, but must also be willing to accept them. Tiger now has the opportunity to respond to and accept the consequences his decisions have set in motion. I know that somewhere, Steve McNair is wishing he had the same opportunity.

Coach Potato
Spec-Taters.com

Filed under: Parenting on December 5th, 2009