Nike’s holding him, Accenture’s ditching him, and nary a buyer’s in sight: of all the burns levied against Tiger Woods, the worst on his wallet is his status as an endorser’s hot potato. With news that a former doctor of Woods’s is under investigation for shuttling steroids, the golfer has hit reputational—and marketplace—rock bottom. So is now a good time for lesser companies to swoop in on the Woods brand family? For insight, NEWSWEEK’s Sarah Ball spoke with Bob Boland, an attorney who has negotiated more than 100 athlete and endorsement contracts, and who is now a professor of sports management at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Excerpts:

Tiger Woods: buy, hold, or sell?
He’s a hold right now. He can have tremendous value as a comeback story, if somebody has a long-term deal with him. The people thinking about dumping him versus the people thinking about keeping him break down into two different buckets. Do they have a long-term contract, in which case the price of getting out is probably not worth getting out for? I think that’s one of the reasons that Tag Heuer decided to hang onto him: I’ve heard they had a six-year deal with him. For them, it’s probably advantageous to wait and see what happens. If you had a short-term deal, and I heard the Accenture deal was under one year, then they get brownie points for getting out now.

But once there’s certainty that he’s coming back, he’s a ‘buy’?
I’d want to have greater certainty. I might begin the conversation with his representation now [if I'm a prospective buyer].

What’s the vetting process? If Tiger’s philandering was the worst-kept secret on the PGA Tour, as it’s reported to be, it seems as though someone didn’t do due diligence.
The vetting process only works if you’re looking for these things. If you really were vetting, I don’t know that you’d buy into any current athlete. There’s always the possibility of something happening. I don’t know that you’d buy anyone who was living if you really were concerned about the vetting. My colleague at NYU and I wrote a column on why naming rights for stadiums were dead, and we thought that maybe the next phase is to name them after somebody who’s no longer with us, whose values are timeless: Jackie Robinson, Tom Landry, Arthur Ashe. We thought Tiger Woods was in that category, but what he really is is just a 34-year-old human.

Read More: – By Sarah Bell, Newsweek