So Tiger Woods crashed his car. His insurance will probably go up a tic, and he'll have to find a nearby Maaco and hope they can match his paint color. Apparently, he had some kind of spat, or lovers' quarrel over some peccadilloes, too. I wonder, firstly, why he didn't have a chauffeur drive him out to the shooting range that night, and why, as the viewing public, we find his expose so refreshing?

Tiger chases the dimpled ball better than nearly everyone in history. Through all his success and uncanny dominance, he's also constructed an impenetrable edifice so structured and calculated that, far from emboldening mystique, has made him awfully boring. Quips, asides, banter on the driving range, these are personalizing things; moments that endear the viewing, and ultimately buying and sponsoring public a chance to embrace another, more emotional aspect of a professional athlete.

Personalities don't have to be revealed through scandal. Memoirs, blogs, television appearances and occasional interviews go a long way in allowing the public metered glimpses into the celebrity mystique. Even watching Tiger act in a deodorant commercial was oddly enthralling, notable that he didn't flash his perfectly-capped, freakishly whitened teeth. The implication was that, for all his cool posturing, Tiger not only sweats, but needs extra-strength protection.

Knowing athletes through endorsements can reveal something, or nothing at all. Michael Jordan's soaring silhouette is still recognizable, arguably because it was the prototypical symbolism of man into icon, of sport into pure, graphic art. Agassi knew that 'Image was Everything,' perhaps the most ingeniously self-evident branding an athlete has ever assumed. Recently, Agassi's memoirs revealed, among other things, that he dabbled with crystal meth. The man beneath the hairpiece is humanized. We can empathize with is struggles, addiction and compulsion a recognizable, base human impulse among us.

Ultimately, by letting his mask slip, Tiger may have renewed interest in Tiger, and, the rumblings of certain sponsors aside, could work wonders for his marketability in the long run. The greater the diversity of products, goods and services he endorses, the more Madison Avenue perversely opens and expands our perception and knowledge of a celebrity who, to this point, has valued media privacy to a suffocating extent.