There is plenty of news about Tiger Woods these days – more than we need, but not as much as we want.

Details about his car accident in Florida roughly a week and a half ago continue to filter out, each new development more bizarre than the last.

We're told he was found shoeless and snoring on the street after the accident, a golf cart for some reason nearby.

We hear allegations about indiscretions with cocktail waitresses and hostesses, and theories about how his wife, Elin, may have responded.

The general consensus is that Woods has handled the saga poorly, hiding behind statements on his website and refusing to talk to the media.

He's entitled to his privacy, of course, but he's missed plenty of chances to nip this in the bud – to do damage control, or at least let a publicist do it for him.

There are a number of lessons emerging from this episode, some of them his and some of them ours.

He's learning there are strings attached to fame and fortune, and that he can only do so much to control how he is perceived.

He's learning that he cannot control the press at large the way he controls the sports media, to whom he will speak only in measured, boring clips about that chip shot he made on 16, or the 20-foot putt that won the tournament.

He's learning that people are more than the sum of their accomplishments – that their personal faults and indiscretions are lumped in as well.

The rest of us are learning a thing or two about common decency and our lust for knowledge that really isn't essential.

We're learning things about the pedestal we put athletes on, realizing that while they're better than us in sport, they're often no better than we are as people.

It's all a bit sad, of course – for Woods, and for us. It will take time for him to regain the public support he's lost, and he's learning unfortunate truths about the way of the world.

His fans are learning, some of them for the first time, that athletes often fail to live up to the images they project.

We're apt to gain more knowledge about Tiger Woods in the near future than we need, despite his best efforts to stem the tide.

It's perhaps not the life he signed up for, but it's the one he's got. And things could certainly be worse.