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Tiger Woods To Michael Vick: 'Waiting A Long Time Got People Polarized' (VIDEO)

First Posted: 03/18/10 06:12 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 04:00 PM ET

WaggleRoom.com and SportsByBrooks highlight a clip ESPN dug up from 2007. Asked to comment about Michael Vick's dogfighting scandal, Woods shared his thoughts on what made the story spiral out of control:

I just think that if you made that big of a mistake you gotta come out and just be contrite... be honest... and just tell them -- tell the public that I was wrong and I think waiting a lot of time I think he got a lot of people polarized.... Personally I think, I'm not really good at this, but I just think if he would have come out earlier I think he would have diffused a little more of it. Whatever it is, what he was involved in was not good.

Woods has been criticized for responding in a similarly insular way. Scroll down to see the video of Woods' comments. In the clip, Brian Kenny points out that Woods apologized five days after the car accident (he issued another, more detailed statement on December 11), while Vick waited six weeks before apologizing.

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WaggleRoom.com and SportsByBrooks highlight a clip ESPN dug up from 2007. Asked to comment about Michael Vick's dogfighting scandal, Woods shared his thoughts on what made the story spiral out of cont...
WaggleRoom.com and SportsByBrooks highlight a clip ESPN dug up from 2007. Asked to comment about Michael Vick's dogfighting scandal, Woods shared his thoughts on what made the story spiral out of cont...
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03:55 AM on 01/03/2010
Who knows what Tiger was really saying? We don't even know the QUESTION he is supposedly responding to. Brian Kenny's lead in tells us how ESPN would like to spin it, but Brian Kenny wasn't the lead in on the original video—see the original 2007 intro to Tiger's comments as compared to the 2009 here: www.pullthatthread.com

Why don't we ever get to hear how the reporter wheedles responses out of their interviewees? How do we know the reporter didn't qualify his question, ie, what to do when faced with CRIMINAL charges? How do we know Tiger doesn't feel one way about scandals involving FELONIES, and scandals involving PERSONAL misbehavior?

Does Brian Kenny's 2009 lead in clarify the context in which Tiger's comments were made, or do they frame them to titillate the public obsessed with events two years into the future?

Unless we ask Tiger Woods what he meant, versus how the ESPN editors wished to portray him, why speculate and judge? Tiger could have spent 20 minutes insisting he didn't feel qualified to comment before being harangued into it. it's the most innocuous response anyone had toward Vick's behavior in 2007—which is how those comments need to be judged. In light of what was going on with Vick, then, not Tiger, now.

Show me the entire interview, with the reporter, and then I'll say everyone knows enough to sit in judgment.
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04:13 AM on 12/24/2009
Is the real scandal that there is doping in golf?
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11:08 PM on 12/21/2009
This scandal deflects from the others we have heard, namely, the alleged overdose and the connection to a doping doctor. The doping story is the real scandal, whether or not Tiger took any banned substances.
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Tennys Daughter
A fool and his money shall soon perish
09:10 AM on 12/21/2009
Big Teeth practices the GOP mantra "Do as I say . . not as I do"
01:01 PM on 12/20/2009
Or in Tiger's case, his charade lasted so long, his wife was traumatized.
12:59 PM on 12/20/2009
Isn't it ironic that the best manicured lawns in the world are the cemetary and golf course.

Either everyone there is dead, or playing a game that will bore you to death.
12:00 PM on 12/20/2009
The Scots were right: Golf is a good flock spoiled.
01:11 PM on 12/20/2009
Why are the best manicured greens in the world at the cemetary and the golf course?
In the cemetary, everyones dead, at the golf course, a game that is boring to death.

It's just a joke, moderator. You can post it.
RACVC
Forever Young - B. Dylan
02:32 PM on 12/21/2009
Good one G. I hadn't heard it but golf is actually challenging if you play it.
Good rounds, bad rounds, each one teaches you about yourself and your skill set.
I've found that these skills generalize to life, funny how that works.
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Chubbster
Always Under Moderation
11:10 AM on 12/20/2009
Next on the list, steroids. Tiger 2004 and Tiger 2009 photos could be before and afters of Barry Bonds.
Photo comparisons, yes, and how about that notorious doctor Mr. Woods has been seeing? As a hypopituitary patient myself requiring Androgel (testosterone) I'll state right here that androgens can make a person horny as hell...
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natturnerx
i always ask myself "what would nat turner do ?"
01:12 PM on 12/22/2009
wrong ! it is well known that steroids cause a man's testicles to shrink & adversely affect his sexual performance. barry bonds' girlfriend alleges that their sex life was pitiful after he allegedly started using. so tiger's apparently robust sex drive refutes the allegation (not even an allegation at this point) that he used steroids.
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mokachyna
Ready for the zombie apocalypse...if it comes.
07:18 AM on 12/20/2009
Michael Vick broke the law...Tiger doesn't owe me an apology...this is between his family and him.

It's all highly entertaining...don't get me wrong but it's not my business.
01:03 PM on 12/20/2009
Excuse me, but as sick as Vick's acts were, he doesn't owe you an apology, either.
03:23 PM on 12/20/2009
Excuse me, but Vick tortured & killed 100's of innocent animals. He owe's a LOT more than an apology!! He should be behind bars for many, many years to come. What he did was pure evil. Those kind's of people should not be on the streets, let alone allowed to be in a profession that give's him a king's lifestyle.

To even compare these two stories is insulting & sickening!! Tiger cheated on his wife multiple times, most men that can, do. What vick did was so disgusting I can't even bare to think about it.
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LADY2CNTX
12:14 AM on 12/20/2009
Tiger Woods is getting baptized into being 'black'. He's no longer a Cablanasia (or whatever he claimed). White America (media) is obsessed with dragging him down into the mud. I even saw Nancy Grace exploding about Tiger Woods' affairs. After two weeks of the same ole' story I would think that they would have something new to be fixated on by now.

Elin knew what she was getting . . . when she married Tiger. Now, she'll get the 'big payday' and hopefully both of them will be happy.

But, seriously the MEDIA has gone way overboard with the story.
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Talossa
Not all liberals are silly.
02:39 AM on 12/20/2009
Yep, the same way the nasty bigoted media went after Black talk show host David Letterman.

Not everything in this country has to be about race. If Peyton Manning was cheating on his wife with a dozen different floozies, believe me, we would be buried in the story.
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auteur
03:34 AM on 12/20/2009
Ridiculous that you think it wood be the same. Peyton Manning while an icon is a 6 to Tiger's 10. Race, Exposure. Achievenents. These factors are all combining to feed the puritanical self loathing apetite of the US & Britain populace. The bigger the carcas the sweeter the taste. Fatty Arbuckle all over again.
09:56 AM on 12/20/2009
The David Letterman story was a 2 day event and has long been forgotten. Woods and his wife have been on every tabloid since this story broke. His mother is being stalked by paparazzi everywhere she goes. Sorry, no comparison but I also don't believe it's necessarily race either. The difference is that Letterman's lovers did not come out publically against him. Not a single one, while Woods seems to have been much more careless in choosing complete strangers, cocktail waitresses, golddiggers and escorts. At least Letterman stuck to a small circle of close associates, which made it easier to contain.
10:07 AM on 12/20/2009
"White America (media) is obsessed with dragging him down"

Yes, lets give him a mulligan on crashing, cheating, drugs, lying;etc. It never happened!

He can play golf and that is ALL that matters in life!
11:25 AM on 12/20/2009
Yet he did ALL that & still mastered Golf... Ah maybe that's where the anger comes in!
Average guy doesn't get a proper nights rest & can't push papers come work time!
For the "most" part - what do people "OWN" in his story.... perhaps Golf
He OWNS making himself Better!
08:19 PM on 12/19/2009
Why would Woods and Vick resond the same way to two completely different things?
06:20 PM on 12/19/2009
I am now convinced...the media really is trying to paint Tiger Woods as a criminal...that's just disgusting. If you have a problem with infidelity that's all on you but comparing what he did to actual criminal behavior? Oh please...this is very disappointing and shameless
07:46 PM on 12/19/2009
i will put it more bluntly...he is black or non-white if i want to be diplomatic.
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cliffhammond
Onward through the fog!
10:06 PM on 12/19/2009
Cut with the victim stuff, will ya?
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Chubbster
Always Under Moderation
11:22 AM on 12/20/2009
Oh, poor billionaire victim of Racist America.
So many people are getting sick of black shrieks of racism. Do we hear this from Japanese-Chinese-, Korean-, Mexican- and Hindu-Americans?
No.
Why not?
Very few professional victims among them.
08:01 PM on 12/19/2009
No kidding. There's no comparison between the two other than both being non-white and athletes. Let's see if we can eek out even more sensationalism.
04:23 PM on 12/19/2009
Tiger Woods is not doing the same thing as Michael Vick. Tiger made an apology 5 days after the accident and followed up with a more detailed one. Vick waited until 6 weeks before he apologized. We shouldn't adopt the position that "When a man is down, we keep our feet on him". Secondly, he said that he wasn't good at it himself, when speaking about MV and apologizing, maybe that's why he waited 5 days before he spoke up.
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Chubbster
Always Under Moderation
11:24 AM on 12/20/2009
So speed of apology is what counts for you? Even if it is cynically offered only in an attempt to save his heavily damaged ass, in other words, to help out on the bottom line?
03:26 PM on 12/19/2009
Why do all the famous people feel they need to hold court over whatever someone else has done? If I was famous I'd out "NO COMMENT" on a recorder and just hold it up and play it any time someone asked me a question about another famous person.
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lynettema
Little old lady
03:28 PM on 12/19/2009
Tiger was more than likely at a golf tournament when a media pundit brought up the subject of Vick. What's he supposed to say? He can't be rude to the media.
03:26 AM on 12/20/2009
What was he suppose to say? Oh, I don't know...........no comment.
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lynettema
Little old lady
03:25 PM on 12/19/2009
This is disgusting. Comparing TW to Vick! What is coming next? TW did NOT commit a crime. No one is dead. It took Tiger a few days after being hurt in a car accident to make his apology. And the only persons that deserved an apology were his and Elin's family and his sponsors. The rest of you self righteous nit wits should go some where and cool off. The longer this trashing goes on, the more sympathy I have for Tiger. He deserves whatever he gets from his wife, but none of you have a beef with him.