AMERICA AT LARGE:ON FEBRUARY 7th of this year, on an overcast and unseasonably cool afternoon in Mississippi, Tiger Woods checked himself out on a day pass from the Gentle Path rehab facility and drove across town to the home of Hattiesburg's most prominent resident, with whom he passed the day and early evening watching the telecast of Super Bowl XLIV from Miami.

No record exists of the dialogue between the famous athletes that day. Perhaps Tiger was seeking a few pointers he hoped to put to use in a two-hand-touch football game conducted on Gentle Path’s sprawling lawns. Bret Favre, who plays to plus-one, hardly needed any golf tips from Tiger.

What the two might have discussed, but probably did not, as they munched on hors d’oeuvres prepared by the quarterback’s wife, Deanna Favre, was the diabolical role a modern contrivance might have in the undoing of both.

It had been Woods’s incautious use of the mobile phone that initially inspired his former wife Elin Nordegen to come after him with the business end of a five-iron.

Seven months later, Favre would find his reputation, if not what remains of his NFL career, imperilled as the result of salacious two-year old indiscretions preserved on a BlackBerry belonging to a former New York Jets “sideline reporter” named Jenn Sterger.

Favre, who turned 41 last Sunday, is in his 20th professional season, with his fourth NFL team. A three-time Most Valuable Player, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback came within an overtime loss to the New Orleans Saints in last year’s NFC championship game of reaching his third Super Bowl, and on the strength of his resilience and longevity alone owns pretty much every significant career record for his vocation.

Every time Favre takes the field he extends his extant records in numerous categories: he has thrown more touchdown passes, passed for more yards, thrown more passes, and had more passes intercepted than any man who ever played the game. In last Monday night’s loss to the Jets, he also extended his NFL record for most career fumbles.

Perhaps his most noteworthy achievement, though, is one that is in a large measure responsible for all the other records: including play-off appearances, he has been the starting quarterback in 313 consecutive games.

He has played through injury, he has played through illness, he has played through the death of his father, but that stretch is now threatened by an in-house investigation ordered by commissioner Roger Goodell.

Given the NFL’s zero-tolerance policy, it seems entirely possible Goodell, who this season suspended Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for off-field indiscretions despite the absence of criminal charges, could hand down a suspension that would end Favre’s consecutive-games skein, in the face of persuasive evidence that the quarterback engaged in a persistent pattern of sexual harassment by sending lewd photos (of himself, apparently) to, and leaving suggestive voicemails on, Ms Sterger’s BlackBerry in 2008, when both were in the employ of the Jets.

While the temptation is to compare Favre’s present situation with Woods’ of 11 months ago, at this point the cases of the Super Bowl-watching pals dovetail significantly. Woods’s self-inflicted misfortune involved varying degrees of philandering, infidelity, carelessness, and stupidity, but there was never the suggestion of actionable illegal conduct.

Any NFL investigation will be conducted in the midst of what has now become a tabloid feeding frenzy, following reports on the website Deadspin, which first broke the story that ultimately forced Goodell’s hand.

There will be considerable sentiment among football fans that the probe is unwarranted, that this should be nobody’s business but Brett Favre’s and maybe his wife’s and, perhaps, his psychiatrist’s. But from an institutional standpoint, the NFL has no choice. It is now legally obliged to investigate.

A word on the dramatispersonae might be in order here. While Jenn Sterger doesn't fit the profile of a gold-digging shakedown artist (if money had been her objective, she could have threatened to flog the evidence to the National Enquirertwo years ago and been a lot richer for it), the description of her job title as a "reporter" of any stripe is one with which actual reporters might take issue. Her principal qualifications for the position appear to have been a toothy smile and an imposing set of boobs, photogenic qualities she put to good use in her college days as one of Florida State's "Cowgirls", an experience she subsequently related in a "Confessions of a Cowgirl" story for Sports Illustrated.

Ms Sterger has also posed for both Maximand Playboyprior to being hired by the Jets to jiggle enthusiastically from the sidelines for the benefit of their in-house video system.

None of this should justify making her the target of unwelcome sexual advances, though one does have to wonder about her preserving and sharing the offending material, as she apparently did on several occasions over the past two years.

The conduct of Deadspin must also be called into question here. Having engaged in a long dialogue with Ms Sterger as it attempted to persuade her to voluntarily share the mobile phone evidence, the website essentially blackmailed her by threatening to reproduce her email correspondence on the subject whether she agreed or not. Having ignited the spit-storm by breaking the story, Deadspin dispatched one of its “reporters” to run around the Meadowlands parking lot before Monday night’s game, gauging fan reaction to a cell phone on which he displayed downloaded images of what was purportedly Brett Favre’s member. All in the interest of journalistic truth.

(How do we know the object in question is indeed Favre's? According to the internet sleuths from Deadspin, the hand with which he is holding it displays a wristwatch identical to one the quarterback wore during one of his "retirement" press conferences a couple of years ago. Besides, the guy who owns the piece de resistancein the cellphone video is wearing Crocs, footwear known to be favoured by Favre.)

The percolating scandal also resulted in the emergence of not one but two massage therapists who formerly worked for the Jets, each claiming to have been the recipient of smarmy voicemail propositions from Favre.

While those details have given the tabloid story further legs, the masseuses were technically “independent contractors”, meaning that their testimony would lack legal standing in a sexual harassment case.

Brett Favre and Jenn Sterger, however, were paid by the same employer in 2008, and on that basis the team of (mostly) former FBI agents who comprise NFL Security is aggressively pursuing the matter.

Favre can’t hope to salvage his reputation, but the one thing that could preserve his consecutive-games-started record would be Sterger’s failure to cooperate.

Without her testimony, there is no case, and on Monday, Sterger’s business manager issued a statement implying she remains open to a counter-offer.

“We’re looking at all our options right now and our only concern is what’s in Jenn’s best interest.”

Favre, in the meantime, could be forgiven for thinking now : “What would Tiger do?”