AP crowns Tiger Woods soap opera sport story of the year

The Associated Press has named its top 10 sports stories of the year, based on ballots from US news organizations that make up the AP's membership.

Tiger Woods is No. 1 on this list.

Yes 2010 was a tough year for Tiger Woods, who went without a win for the first time in his career, lost his No. 1 professional golf ranking, and saw his marriage crumble following allegations of infidelity (made in 2009).

But does Woods deserve a spot atop this list in a year when the New Orleans Saints won their first Super Bowl, thousands of fans converged on Africa for a historic and vuvuzela-fueled World Cup, and Lebron James captivated a nation for 5 minutes with his free agency frenzy?

Not everyone agreed with the AP choice.

"The Tiger Woods story was really more of a 2009 story, right?" asked Andrew Sharp on the sports site sbnation.com. "It spilled well into 2010, but the real story in all of it was the Thanksgiving car crash in 2009, and the phenomenal reporting in the weeks that followed. None of which was done by sports reporters, because, um, well, good question. In any case, US Weekly owes Tiger money (which will go straight to Elin)."

"The fallout from Woods' admission of serial infidelity edged [out] a very different sort of story: The New Orleans Saints winning their first Super Bowl championship, giving an emotional boost to their hurricane-ravaged city." said bloggers from The San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com site. "It doesn't take too much of a national perspective to see why those two stories might have trumped the Giants in news value if not pure sports exhilaration."

Others, however, said that the AP's selection was on the money. "When Woods squandered a four-shot lead in his last tournament of the year, it marked the first time in 29 occasions he had lost a lead of more than two strokes in the final round and the first time since 1995 ... he went through a year without a win," noted Phillip Hersh in his stories of the year list for The Chicago Tribune. "Also gone: his wife (divorce), his No. 1 ranking, a reported $22 million in endorsement income ... and a reported $110 million in the divorce settlement."