LA QUINTA, Calif. - The back cover of the tabloid New York Post was what we would expect, a photo of a Jets running back. The team's biggest game in years is Sunday against the Colts. Overkill is permissible. Jets, Jets Jets.

But that's the back cover.

The front cover is Tiger Woods. In a hooded sweatshirt, at the rehab center in Mississippi, under the headline, ‘TIGER HOODS.'' Not Mark Sanchez. Not even Rex Ryan, who's never afraid to say just about anything, and good for him. Tiger Woods.

You might expect that thinking here in California desert, golf country, where they have streets named Weiskopf Way or Double Eagle Way and the rain-pounded Bob Hope Classic is dog-paddling along.

But New York, with Obama's health plan in peril or more realistically those Jets taking over the town we thought was in possession of the Yankees?

What it indicates as many have contended is that Tiger Woods is the biggest name in sports. Or for the moment out of sports. It also indicates scandal sells, especially when it involves the biggest name in sports.

You knew the paparazzi would find Tiger, no matter how long it took. Why don't we send those guys to Pakistan or Afghanistan, wherever Osama bin Laden is laying low? They'd locate him. They located Tiger didn't they? They got a detailed enough photo to make us believe it's Woods, even in a partial disguise and a beard.

For a few weeks after the accident in late November, Tiger dominated the news. Tiger this, Tiger that, Jokes by Letterman. Contract severance by Accenture and Tag Heur. But like Tiger himself, the story disappeared.

Now it's back, and it's going to stay.

Now the PGA Tour has started. The Hope is the third event on the 10-month schedule. And at every stop from Torrey Pines, where Woods traditionally began his year, to Tucson to Doral, until Tiger actually plays, the questions are going to become litany.

We'll be asking when he's going to return. And what he'll be like as a person and a golfer when he does return.

The queries make great fodder back there in Manhattan, but in the press rooms they are getting on the nerves of the other players, at least those who aren't as openly curious as the media.

It isn't that discussions of sex therapists or marriage counselors are unacceptable among the guys who hit the 300-yard drives, rather that those gentlemen have decided while they wish Woods well his troubles are not their troubles. And he's not only golfer on Tour.

Literally, that's true. But as the New York Post coverage makes all too clear, symbolically Woods is golf. As A-Rod in baseball and Kobe in basketball, Tiger is more a personality than professional. Someone who crosses the line from athlete to star, someone who is, well, front-page material even in seclusion.

Shane Bertsch is a golfer whose bit of fame comes from a tennis match he lost in straight sets to Andre Agassi when both were juniors. Bertsch is almost 40 and been a pro for almost 16 years but has had such limited success that in the media guide he's listed in the back under the category "Other Prominent PGA Tour members.

The first day of the Hope, which is the only five-round, 90-event on Tour, Bertsch had 10 birdies, no bogeys and shot 62 for the lead. Lightheartedly, a journalist told Bertsch he had knocked Tiger out of the headlines.

"Oh yeah?'' Bertsch responded. "Did he show himself?''

None of this, "I'm not talking about Tiger. I just shot 62.'' No a genuine, honest comment, one full of curiosity.

Told there was a photo of Woods on the National Enquirer web site, the picture that would be used by the Post, Bertsch jumped into the subject. The description of his 10 birdies was no competition for the sighting of T. Woods.

"It's amazing he stayed hidden for this long,'' said Bertsch of Tiger. "I don't know how he could do it. I mean, I feel bad for him, What's going on? Obviously I don't condone what he did, but I want him back out here as bad as anyone does.''

Then Bertsch offered a poignant observation of Tiger. "I think half the people were sick of hearing about him winning all the time,'' Bertsch said, "and half the people wanted him to be (winning all the time).''

If people are sick of reading about him doing everything but playing golf, it hasn't registered.

By merely standing in a courtyard in the clinic where he's receiving treatment for sexual addition, Tiger Woods became the biggest story in a tabloid in the biggest city in America.

The Jets are still able to grab that spotlight, but only if they beat the Colts. Otherwise, in a variation of groundhog day, there will be more Tiger and more winter, in no particular order.