It has to be said. No one is as innocuous, as hackneyed, as stale, as hyperbolic, as farfetched, as overblown, as shallow, as unlettered and, as Andy Dufresne once said to Warden Norton, as “obtuse,” as a sports radio or television commentator. Rich Lerner, Frank Nobilo, Brandel Chamblee and Notah Begay III, apparently bowing to the demands of Golf Channel execs, jacked their jaws ad nauseum, dissecting Tiger Woods’ most recent tragic injury, probing his spine physiology, muscle spasm syndrome, performance psychology and golf swing anatomy. You’ve heard cardiothoracic surgeons discuss triple bypass with less precision and resolute certainty. Brilliantly, you observe that keeping Tiger on a kingly pedestal has bottom line consequences for these pundits, for the network, for the advertisers and for the vast entourage of special interests that shadow his every step like salivating scavengers. Certainly, America loves a soap opera. Certainly, money talks. Unfortunately, so do the talking heads. You do get it. Somebody has to fill the time, however ungrammatically. Evidently, talking heads never actually read what they say after they say it, realizing that transcripts wouldn’t pass 7th grade English standards or journalistic standards for probity. Typically, you’re unduly critical of people simply trying to do a job. Be fair. Admit that the job is important — promoting a business, the celebrities who occupy the stage and the charities they support. True, but the job has nothing to do with journalism or reporting or investigating to uncover the truth of anything. For example, you never heard one sport’s pundit on any network question the authenticity of the Woods’ injury. Like any other ordinary observer, you only know what you saw — Tiger hitting a ball from an awkward lie, nimbly jumping into a bunker, collecting himself and striding up the fairway. On multiple replays, you didn’t see a wince or a grimace. You didn’t see a lurch or a falter. And this was the exact moment he apparently felt the “twinge” or the “tweak.” Subsequently, as his performance unraveled, so did the condition of his back. As he “painfully” quit the stage, no commentator dared utter a smidgen of doubt. They couldn’t risk the disapproval and the disgrace. They couldn’t risk being shunned and drummed out of the business. Fair enough. So it’s left to amateur critics to risk denunciation — to suggest that Woods has a history of playing poorly only when injured, of never being injured when playing well, of never leaving the field of play when in contention, of never attributing a sub-par performance to his own failure. You must conclude the best golfer in the world must always be best in the eyes of the world. Only circumstances outside of his own unparalleled ability can get in the way of his vaulted stature. And the pundits rigorously feed this appraisal. if Tiger isn’t at the head of the class, he must have leg or back issues; his teacher must be meddling with his swing; he must be shouldering intense media pressure, etc. Excuses are the convenient armor of a prodigious ego. But excuses are essential to a media that believes, without Tiger, the money machine will sputter and shrink. At the end of the day, broadcasters are terrified that an absent Tiger will cripple the PGA tour, and materially affect their careers. Some even make the case — asking if the tour could possibly maintain its prominence without its superstar. Your opinion counts for little but you seem to remember that golf  continued to blossom without the likes of a Jones, Hogan, Nelson, Snead, Palmer, Nicklaus and Player. Baseball, football and basketball manage to thrive without  iconic heroes of yesteryear.  But sports media pundits must live to exaggerate — to make gods of men. It’s what they do, relentlessly — because exaggeration is in their self interest. You have only one recourse — the mute button. Use it.