In sports, it all comes down to the domination of one

	Solitary hero Michael Phelps may be the biggest name heading into the '08 Olympics. Heinz Kluetmeier/SI
	MAILBAG Frank Deford will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

There have, once again, been a series of serious soccer disturbances in Europe. In such disparate societies as England, Spain and Greece, the hooligans have been about their awful antics again.

That sort of thing so rarely happens here in the United States. And really, I don't think it is the nature of the sport on the field -- soccer -- which so regularly prompts this violence abroad.

Instead, I believe it is soccer's primacy. Oh to be sure, in some countries there are other team sports which attract some widespread popularity -- cricket, ice hockey, rugby, basketball here and there. But soccer is inevitably the be-all.

In the U.S., though, as passionate as we may be about our teams, the interest is divided. Your pro football team loses, OK, here comes basketball, baseball, hockey. As antithetical as college sports are to education, they add to the athletic attention deficit. We never devote ourselves too much to one team, let alone to one sport. We always boast in the U.S. about how we find strength in diversity. Well, add the strength of the diversity of our popular sports to that mix.

Aha, but if there is no one sport that rules our emotions, conversely, it's easier now for one dominant figure to bestride any particular sport. When Robert Woolmer, the Pakistani cricket coach, was murdered at the World Cup last month, cricket people quickly lifted the cry that the games must go on, that no one person is bigger than the sport. How often do we hear that august refrain?

And it's utter garbage, of course.

Hey, you da man. Tiger Woods is much bigger than golf. It didn't matter whether he won or lost the Masters this past week, because it was his tournament before it started. Nobody won; he lost. At the water cooler, which has replaced the cracker barrel as the favored locus of American colloquy, what do people say during a golf tournament? Who's ahead? No. What's Tiger doing?

If Woods doesn't play in a tournament, it isn't just a tree falling that nobody hears. It's the whole links forest silently collapsing. A PGA tournament in Colorado, the International, folded because Tiger wouldn't put it on his schedule. It was replaced by a tournament that will be played in suburban Washington that will -- guess what? -- have Mr. Woods serving as the tournament's host, his charity as the tournament's beneficiary.

Roger Federer has reached the same estate in tennis. Of course, tennis is luckier than golf. The major tournaments feature men and women both. At least for the moment, Federer is only bigger than men's tennis. For the moment.

And now, quick: Name two current swimmers. No, Johnny Weissmuller and Esther Williams have left the pool. Swimming is hardly an A-list sport, but if you could name one swimmer it would surely be Michael Phelps, who sets a world record most times he splashes. The kid from Baltimore won seven gold medals at the world championships last week in Melbourne and should've won eight, but a teammate botched the relay.

Next year he'll be going after Mark Spitz's record of seven Olympic golds. Bigger than swimming? The Phelps fuss is only going to get gustier as the Games approach. Unless some hero comes out of the woodwork in track and field, Phelps will go to Beijing bigger than all of NBC's Olympics. Not even Tiger can top that.