If you watched any TV or got online at all Friday, there’s a pretty good chance that you saw something about Tiger Woods, who apologized to friends, family and the rest of America for his many sexual transgressions at a midday news conference.

You may have also seen, heard or read the insights of every sports pundit and their mother. On SportsCenter, for example, questions included: How sincere was Tiger? Why wasn’t his wife in the audience? What did his apology tell us about Buddhism? How would his sponsors react? Would viewers at home be more likely to trust his words when, halfway through the speech, the camera angle changed to look out at the audience?

Trust me, I am not making these up. One commentator went so far as to suggest that, a decade from now, people would still be able to remember where they were and what they were doing when Tiger Woods gave his comeback speech.

Are you kidding me? This was not one of those few profound moments in American history we will all remember. Americans remember where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, when Martin Luther King delivered his speech from the Lincoln Memorial and when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. More recently, each and every American will always remember where they were when they first saw two planes crash into and bring down the World Trade Center towers.

But a speech given by a golfer? Not a chance. Regardless of Tiger’s supreme world-famousness, he is, at the end of the day, just another stranger. An extremely gifted one, yes, but still just a stranger. He did not take a vow to me, he did not break a vow to me and I therefore do not care whether or not he broke a vow to his wife and embarrassed himself and his family by sleeping with dozens of women. Sure, I think that what he did was wrong and reprehensible, but what he does and says does not impact my life, and therefore doesn’t matter to me.

Granted, his apology was likely meaningful to his family, friends and sponsors, but that’s it. Even Tiger’s golfer peers, whose sport has taken a huge hit in viewership and sponsorship dollars since his post-Thanksgiving hiatus, didn’t care about anything he said because he didn’t tell them the one thing they — and likely most golf fans — hoped he would: when he planned to golf again.

Now all this does not mean Tiger’s speech, while unimportant and meaningless to the general public, was not informative. To the contrary, Tiger offered three very informative, albeit unfortunate, reminders.

First, Tiger reminded us that wealthy and powerful males seem to quite often regard women as entitlements and privileges of their success. This not only goes for uber sports stars like Tiger and Kobe Bryant before him, but also for celebrities and congressmen, the most recent of whom include intern-loving David Letterman, Kate-hating John Gosselin, baby-daddying John Edwards and allegedly Appalachian-hiking Mark Sanford.

A second reminder is that a whole heap of married Americans, whether they’re as famous as Tiger or not, commit adultery and, whether it’s in the cards for Tiger or not, get divorced. While no statistics are available regarding adultery by married Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that an estimated 2,162,200 Americans got married in 2009, while a whopping 1,065,775 got divorced. Of these divorces, it would seem fair to guess that perhaps a half of divorces are caused by affairs, meaning that roughly a quarter of all married people likely commit adultery.

Thirdly and perhaps most unfortunately, Tiger’s apology makes clear that the American cable news media have completely given up on their responsibility to set an agenda based on what the American public needs to know. From CNN to Fox, the majority of channels carried the press conference live, and those that didn’t were sure to follow it up with hours of analysis. They did so not because they thought this was newsworthy content that would inform their audience, but that it was newsworthy simply because its dramatic nature might keep viewers from changing the channel.

So, Tiger, thanks for nothing. You spoke words that I and the rest of America didn’t need to hear, but just because you’re you, I had to be exposed to them anyway. And if that weren’t bad enough, your speech called to mind the shortcomings of American celebrities, American marriage and the American media.

And I thought you were supposed to be a golfer.

Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.