Tiger Woods had a rough year, from the tabloid turmoil that followed the unraveling of his marriage to his winless year on the course. But even in disgrace and defeat, Tiger was more interesting than franchises like the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco Giants ending long championship droughts or Lebron James and his Decision, at least according to the Associated Press.

The AP determines its “Sports Story of the Year” by asking its members to rank their Top 10 sports stories. Ballots were cast by 176 U.S. news organizations. Tiger’s Troubles ranked first, with 1316 points. The New Orleans Saints winning the Super Bowl not long after Hurricane Katrina was a close second with 1215. Lebron James and the NBA’s unprecedented free agency drama was third at 1085.

Tiger has yet to tweet about his “victory.”

The rest of the AP’s Top 10:

There hasn’t been much good news for Tiger Woods on the golf course lately — T23 at last week’s British Open, no wins all year, talk he could be left off the US Ryder Cup roster this fall.  But there’s at last a sign that Tiger the Brand is still strong and can bounce back from all the infidelity and divorce drama: a Harris Interactive Poll released Tuesday found Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant in a dead heat for America’s most popular athlete. Considering Kobe Bryant is a month removed from winning back-to-back NBA titles, while Tiger hasn’t won a major in over two years — that’s pretty impressive for Tiger.

Still Tiger had topped the same poll every year since 2006, so clearly all the tabloid fodder has taken a little bit out of him.  Bryant finished tied for fourth in the poll last year.

Thanks to a rainy weekend we’ve got a doubleheader of NASCAR races on Monday from Texas Motor Speedway.  The Sprint Cup race we’ll go first, starting at 12 noon Eastern/9 AM Pacific.  Today’s forecast calls for cool temperatures and cloudy skies, but no rain is expected meaning that the race will most likely take place as scheduled.

Texas is a tough track to handicap, at least based on past performance, since the management has changed its configuration twice.  Throw in the changes brought about by NASCAR’s so called ‘Car of Tomorrow’ and the conditions of the track and the racing that occurs on it have changed several times.  Despite that, the drivers that have done well before the track configuration changes have done well since and a lot of what horse racing enthusiasts would call ‘track bias’ still looks to be valid.

Big day of NASCAR betting as stock car racing’s traveling road show heads south to Atlanta for the Kobalt Tools 500.  Atlanta is considered one of the fastest ‘non restrictor plate’ tracks on the circuit and we’ll try to get a position on the guy who ends up taking the checkered flag.  In three races we’ve had one winner and a good shot at victory late in both of the other two.  Last week Jeff Gordon was running up front all day but got passed late by Jimmie Johnson who won for the 2nd straight week.

KOBALT TOOLS 500–ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY