From Tiger Woods to Mark McGwire to doping at the Tour de France to athletes going off on a rant — the sports world has its fair share of potentially damaging public relations challenges that are well-chronicled by media, blogs, and throughout social networks.

Whether it’s ESPN, Fox Sports, Twitter, Deadspin, Facebook, JoeSportsFan, or HallofTheVeryGood — the full spectrum of sports watchers are chronicling every moment, fans are paying attention, and reputations are often damaged by poorly calculated missteps. Indeed, that’s why many public relations agencies have burgeoning (albeit not very profitable) sports business practices.

With this in mind, today I began a new series for JoeSportsFan.com — where I’ve been a longtime contributor writing about various sports topics and other dumb stuff — to examine PR challenges in the sports world.

You can see my first post about a feud this week between the star player and manager of Major League Baseball’s Florida Marlins, and suggest how the situation could have been handled more professionally so as to limit the reputation damage to those involved, as well as the team during a time when they are trying to build momentum for the opening of their new ballpark next season.

I hope you enjoy the series and appreciate your feedback — good or bad — so that it doesn’t suck so much.

Carry on.