NEWTON'S LAW: TYSON HAS WHAT WE ASPIRE TO, BUT IT DOESN'T LOOK GOOD NOW

Mike Tyson is two of the kinds of people America loves most. As it happens, they are polar opposites.

First, he is the rags-to-riches hero of storybooks, a street kid taken under the wing of a kindly old man who cultivated an enormous talent the world would not have otherwise known.

When he wore the heavyweight crown, he was living, breathing evidence that out there, somewhere, are young people whose potential is buried by their circumstance in life. His profession might disturb you, but his story had a capacity for inspiration.

That was then, as they say, and this is now. Or perhaps, that is ying, this is yang.

We marvel at Tyson now because he is the riches-to-rags story, a man who had it all, had it within his grasp to keep it all, yet somehow managed to blow it. Americans are fascinated by wasted opportunities, of things that might have been.

Mike Tyson again fascinates us.

Tyson is like Michael Jackson in this sense; he's been in the public eye so long, it's hard to grasp how young the guy is.

Think of all that's passed before his eyes in 25 years. Try to climb inside this guy's brain for a moment.

He's known the loneliness of being an unwanted child. He's known the glory and rewards of athletic achievement. He's known the grief of losing the one man who could have kept him from this demise. He's known the humiliation of a very public divorce.

Now, unless appeals work in his favor, Tyson will know years of incarceration for the commission of an act he apparently felt was his entitlement.

My interest in boxing is limited. I do not attach to it the nobility many sports writers do ... epic fisticuffs by oversized men.

Still, you must wonder at the discipline it takes to stand alone in a boxing ring, before millions of eyes, and know that in the coming minutes you will pummel or be pummeled. One might guess that the only thing outweighing the majesty of that moment is the horror of it.

Something tells me the 18-year-old victim of this rape now knows that feeling too.

Lost in the aftermath of this sad case are the only things that really matter: that a serious crime occurred, that a teen-ager's life has been irreversibly scarred, that justice has been fashioned. We'll hear a lot about the future of "the champ," but little about what a woman does to put her life together after a rape.

We will see no noble departure from boxing for Tyson, the way Magic Johnson left pro basketball. Maybe Tyson won't depart at all.

Tyson has a big gate left in him, and the pay-per-view crowd might see it is extracted from him.

What's to stop such a fight? Don King's shame? Get serious. The furor of feminists that a convicted rapist would be allowed to have a multi-million dollar payday? Name the last time indignation got the upper hand on profitability.

We give these idols too much room to move, allow them too many shortcomings? Conferring on someone national attention should not be the same as allowing them free reign of society. At some point, Mike Tyson may have believed that. Having been fawned over for so many years, maybe he could believe nothing else.

Is this somehow the public's fault? Do we bestow on our heroes so much praise that they feel there is nothing they can't do? I don't buy it. Mike Tyson isn't a victim, he's a felon.

In one of his best years as heavyweight champion of the world, Mike Tyson made $71 million. He had stumbled across life's lottery and in each fist was the ability to keep marking the right numbers.

He got the things we supposedly aspire to, wealth and fame. Would you trade places with him now?