Sleaze has been the undisputed champion of the sports world for 2009

It dominated this year’s sports scene like a black-tasseled whip.

Athletes were embarrassed by it, executives were crushed under it, and at least one former Notre Dame football coach tripped over it and fell on his big fat face.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Athletes’ transgressions: A column by Bill Plaschke in the Dec. 9 Sports section about media coverage of the many transgressions of sports figures this year said we were treated to reports about allegations made in court that basketball star Dwyane Wade had given his wife a sexually transmitted disease. Wade’s estranged wife had made that claim in a counter-petition for dissolution of marriage. She later withdrew that counter-petition. —

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It made headlines -- and mincemeat -- of Alex Rodriguez and Madonna, Jamie McCourt and the Bodyguard, Tiger Woods and approximately 1,556 Women With Big Hair.

It skewered Dwyane Wade in court papers, Erin Andrews through a peephole, and Shaquille O’Neal from here to Gilbert Arenas’ fiancée.

It dominated every tough opponent, captured every large headline, and thus should now be honored with the biggest of awards.

Our 2009 Sportsman of the Year is Sleaze.

Good job, Sleaze. You were unbeaten and unabashed. You toppled the world’s greatest golfer, this country’s most powerful female sports boss, and any sense of decency and fairness in what were once our country’s most pleasant pastimes.

Strong work, Sleaze. You made us forget about that awful beauty of baseball and focus on how the philandering third baseman got to second base. You made us ignore the sappy serenity of golf to watch the hound-dog champion play through his protesting wife to drive over water and into a tree.

It was your year, Sleaze.

The domination started in Miami, in the middle of January, when we were treated to reports that basketball star Wade had allegedly given his wife a sexually transmitted disease.

All of this just two years after Wade was named Father of the Year by the National Father’s Day Committee.

It has continued throughout the year into December, a month that has devolved into a national search for the one woman who has not claimed to have had sex with Tiger Woods.

Surely she’s out there somewhere, feeling embarrassed and alone.

Between those epic dunks on Wade and Woods, Sleaze worked the entire court, spanning continents and crudities, farmlands and fetishes.

Sleaze has been in a booth in an Italian restaurant in Louisville, Ky., where reports surfaced of a dalliance between Louisville basketball Coach Rick Pitino and a one-night stand.

Sleaze has been in Israel with then-Dodgers president Jamie McCourt and her bodyguard/boyfriend, a vacation that preceded the beginning of divorce proceedings.

Sadly, Sleaze was in Nashville twice, for the murder of a former football star and the personal violation of a sports TV star.

First it was former quarterback Steve McNair, a married man who was murdered while sitting on a couch next to a girlfriend who apparently then committed suicide.

Then it was ESPN’s Erin Andrews, who was in a Nashville hotel when she was the victim of a video stalker who attempted to peddle her nude video to Internet sites.

Sleaze was undiscriminating, cold-blooded, and everywhere, so pervasive that last weekend, it wound up being used by one of the same people it had earlier fought.

Why on earth would former Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis, out of nowhere, relevant to nothing, suddenly imply USC football Coach Pete Carroll was living with a graduate student in Malibu?

Turns out, of course, that Weis should have been more worried about who was living with his defense in South Bend.

The scary thing isn’t only what Weis said, but how easily he said it -- as easily and thoughtlessly as slipping two bucks across the counter at a mini-mart for a soda.

Sleaze has not only become sports’ curse, but its currency, fueling talk radio and Internet blogs and our increasingly wandering attention spans.

With so many games accessible on TV -- virtually any game, anywhere -- the competition does not seem so important.

With so many highlights available -- you are no more than 30 minutes from being able to watch the plays of any day, everyday -- the feats have also lost their gravitas.

The play is no longer enough. We want to know the player.

We are no longer satisfied with the dirt on the uniform, we thirst for the dirt in the bedroom.

Part of the attraction of Woods’ personal troubles is that he is probably the most televised athlete in the world, yet we knew nothing about him.

Now that we do, do we feel better for it?

I don’t. I’m devouring the stuff like everyone else -- really, Tiger, Ambien? -- but I don’t feel good about it.

Sleaze may be Sportsman of the Year, but part of me wishes it would go back to Washington, return to Wall Street, leave sports alone.

The beauty of athletics has always been that it brings us together and collectively, somehow, someway, makes us feel better about ourselves.

How many majors must Woods now play before he makes us feel anything other than disgust?

How many Final Fours will rebuild Louisville’s collegial connection with Pitino?

We know it will hurt us, we know it will forever change the way we look at something we love, but we want to know, we have to know, so much that some fool not only visually molested a TV sideline reporter, but truly believed an Internet site would buy the video of her.

Which makes you wonder who should be more embarrassed -- the athlete who commits the personal sin, or folks like me who rush to read about it?

Good job, Sleaze.

But don’t forget, you couldn’t have done it without us.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

twitter.com/billplaschke