Imrem: What do we want from athletes?
At best, sports fans don't know what they want from athletes. At worst, we're hypocritical on the subject.
So many of us — myself included — bemoan all their anti-social activity but then want an apparently clean-cut Jordan Spieth to be more charismatic.
The young man was 1 stroke from being the rage of the entire sports world early Monday afternoon.
Instead, Spieth is now just another great golfer.
Greatness doesn't quite make it anymore because there are so many great athletes in so many sports.
Only spectacular greatness seems to grab us around the collar and drag us along.
As Spieth chased golf's Grand Slam at 21, a large segment of the public considered the pursuit more compelling than the pursuer.
In other words, Spieth has become a superstar golfer but not a superstar celebrity.
So what do we want, more Grand Slam playoffs like the British Open's, in which Zach Johnson outlasted Louis Oosthuizen and Marc Leishman?
That thing was like the deliberate beating the dull and the drab. Classy as they are, those guys make Spieth seem like one of the Flying Wallendas.
Spieth, more the polite kid next door than a circus act, fell just short of the playoff and a chance to win all four major tournaments in the same year.
A victory would have transcended sports. Leading up to the final major, next month's PGA Championship, Spieth would have been splashed all over national news programs and the covers of mainstream news magazines.
As is, Spieth is now little more than the No. 2 golfer in the world on a course to ascend to No. 1.
Remarkably, that isn't good enough for the fickle who like Spieth but don't love him.
So many of us flinch at the cheating, guns, drugs, impaired driving, domestic battery, sexual assault and other reprehensible behavior by athletes.
Meanwhile, Jordan Spieth hasn't even been caught driving 5 mph over the limit through a school zone.
Yet now that he can't complete the Grand Slam this year, Spieth won't receive as much publicity as baseball's hit king who bet on his sport or one of the NFL's all-time greatest quarterbacks who is accused of deflating footballs.
Maybe that's the media's fault; maybe it's the sports fan's fault.
Jordan Spieth was noticed lately for winning the Masters and U.S. Open and challenging in the British Open.
Ah, but all Spieth does is play outstanding golf.
So many of us dislike all the anti-social activity perpetrated by athletes, along with all the arrogance, boorishness and insensitivity toward fans.
Still, we pay more attention to scandals than to, say, the San Antonio Spurs.
The Spurs have won five NBA titles by reflecting their best player: a snoozingly fundamental, mechanical, methodical big man.
Tim Duncan is one of the greatest players ever, but it's sort of like, “Oh, yeah, add that guy in San Antonio to the list.”
We don't know for sure because he's so young, but Jordan Spieth could turn out to be golf's Tim Duncan instead of its Michael Jordan.
Nothing about Spieth's game is spectacular in a day when baseball isn't the only sport in which chicks dig the longball. Spieth hits it far enough to win, but not far enough to inspire gasps.
Golf by its very nature is bland except perhaps for John Daly's flowery trousers.
Going forward it'll be interesting to see whether we hypocrites pay more attention to the stable Spieth or to erratic athletes like Daly.
mimrem@dailyherald.com