Friday column: High road not always that elevated

It’s OK to stomp out of camp because you’re unhappy with your contract.

It’s not OK to dissemble about why you left and then throw a reporter under the bus because you haven’t got the stones to handle whatever criticism may come your way.

Cortland Finnegan, a top-tier cornerback, may have a beef over what he’s being paid — I don’t know. Pro football being the brutal spectacle it is, I don’t have a problem with players doing whatever they need to do to get top dollar.

But after walking out of Tennessee’s training camp last week, Finnegan, instead of manning up about the reason, took to Twitter to say:

“My absence had nothing to do with a holdout [but was a] personal matter that Titan officials were aware of.”

He then took after Tennessean beat writer Jim Wyatt, who had indicated Finnegan’s absence was caused, indeed, by cash considerations.

“Who and where did this all stem from,” Finnegan tweeted. “Let me guess a tweet and then Wyatt jumped to conclusions with no real story.”

What’s that old line? “Whenever someone says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

To his credit, this week Finnegan admitted the obvious and apologized not only to his teammates and the organization but also to Wyatt.

That showed a little class.

Speaking of a little class — very little — we have Tiger Woods’ ex.

No, no, not ex-wife — ex-caddie, though Steve Williams, in fact, reacted to his recent firing like the proverbial woman scorned.

Williams not only publicly ripped Woods for the move, he brought up Woods’ embarrassing sex scandal, stressing how the caddie had stayed the course with the suddenly disgraced golfer.

“I’m not disappointed in the fact that I got fired,” Williams keened, “but I’m just disappointed in the timing of it, given the fact about how loyal I have been to him. And that loyalty obviously didn’t mean much to him.”

Williams, who in his days with Woods often resembled a braying donkey, was in rare form Sunday when his new employer, Adam Scott, won the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational.

In the post-tournament interview, Williams called Scott’s victory “the most satisfying win of my career,” used the word “I” more than two dozen times and rarely referred to Scott, the man who’d actually swung the clubs.

The next day, Williams allowed that he was “bit over the top.”

Right, and Monday’s Dow Jones average was a tad off.

Woods, in a Wednesday interview, was restrained, acknowledging that Williams had been intemperate, but saying, “Adam has been a friend of mine, and same with Stevie. I sent Stevie a nice text after completion … congratulating him on his win.”

Good for Woods for taking the high road, but then taking a higher road than Steve Williams is really not all that difficult to do.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.