Maybe, to Jen Capriati, Title IX was the one you get after you've won your first eight.

It's hard to say. What is without question is that, during an otherwise uneventful post-match news conference at the U.S. Open last week, Capriati suddenly found herself being asked to address the landmark women's athletic legislation -- or at least to acknowledge its existence.

Reporter: "President Bush has been holding town meetings across the country about Title IX. He's considering changing this important legislation that's helped women get involved in sports. If you could say something to President Bush, what would you say?"

Capriati: "I have no idea what Title IX is. Sorry."

It was a stunning exchange. It brought to light several questions. It prompted several very intelligent subsequent responses and conversations.

And most of all, it left us to ponder this:

You were expecting Churchill in a "Jackass" world?

At what point will we stop acting surprised over the obliviousness of so many of our exalted elite athletes? These people are living in tunnels the likes of which most of us can't even conceive. They're raised to be super-performers, as though there were an underground bin somewhere near Roswell that just keeps spitting out star after star, each slightly less intellectually developed but more athletically carnivorous than the last.

And this is the point: These people are being rewarded for their maniacal single-mindedness. They are celebrated and remunerated and endorsed and photographed and told that they represent the best of us. If they can't figure out how to use an ATM or point to Afghanistan on a map, what the hell? It's not like we're asking them to solve the mysteries of the Pyramids or explain Stonehenge.

A searing forehand, a great jump shot, the ability to hole out from 145 yards away: This is what we expect from our elite athletes. And these days, anything more than that -- and I mean anything -- is considered a spectacular bonus.

You hate to go overboard on Capriati, who wasn't alive when Title IX was created in 1972 and who turned pro as a teenager and thus was in no position either to benefit from the legislation or to become enmeshed in its controversies. All things considered, it should stand as far more surprising to hear Lindsay Davenport speak thoughtfully to Title IX's merits and foibles than to behold Capriati in her genuine ignorance.

But understand: It happens all the time. It happens straight down the line. Tennis is an unusually easy target because of the high concentration of pampered foofs and prima donnas among its upper echelon of talent; but this is an industry thing, not a one-sport phenomenon, and it is a long-running tale. Or were you still waiting for Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to weigh in with their Sept. 11 theories and plans for reorganizing Enron?

I wish I could remember the newspaper that conducted the poll, but the paper's random sampling of Major League Baseball players a few years back found that a staggeringly low percentage of them knew the slightest thing about Jackie Robinson, much less what he meant to baseball. But, heck, those guys sure can hit. Is anybody really asking more?

Asking Jennifer Capriati about Title IX is like asking me what I think of the latest advances in particle acceleration. But what is significant here is not what Capriati knows, but how little we expect of our top-flight performers. I'd say it's far more likely that most people apprised of Capriati's comments would reply, "Yep, that's about right," than be shocked or appalled by them. There is also, of course, the question of how many people in or out of athletics understand much about Title IX in the first place, but that's probably best saved for another day.

There is a remarkable culture of rewarded ignorance at work here. At some point along the timeline, single-mindedness in athletics gave way to a bubble-like existence in which the truly elite jocks were actually expected to be nothing but. If they weren't practicing or playing their sports, they were benefiting from them in the form of appearances or endorsements. Otherwise, it was complete shut down, the athletes closing out the world in order to "recharge" for the next round of wall-to-wall training and performance sessions.

Many pro sports teams have invested heavily in training facilities so vast and all-encompassing that their players can essentially train year-round, straight through their off-seasons. Most players, in fact, would tell you the off-season no longer exists. But the off-season once was a time when athletes were forced to assimilate back into their cities and towns and neighborhoods, book their own flights, get their own food, see and be seen by the ordinary folk who actually populate the planet. You have to wonder whether the curtailing of this process is a good thing -- whether building the perfect beast of an athlete, that is, is all it's cracked up to be.

The golf community doesn't do Tiger Woods a disservice by vainly expecting him to become the point man for this great social movement or that simmering controversy; the golf community does itself a disservice. It knows enough about Woods to know better. It knows enough to understand that what it will receive from Woods is brilliant athletic play and little else. It's no crime on Woods' part that he isn't a social savior, but surely it says something about America's perspective on this sort of thing that for virtually his entire non-toddler life, Woods has done almost nothing besides swing sticks.

It doesn't make Woods dull; they generally don't find places for dullards at Stanford. What it does, though, is very usefully illustrate a system through which young athletes find fame and wealth by concentrating all of their energy, and quite obviously the vast majority of their intellect and passion, to the one thing.

Jennifer Capriati is an extreme example, which probably explains a lot. But there's only one truly huge mistake that can be made here, and it is in assuming that Capriati is an aberration. She's got plenty of company. And the only ones surprised by that have to be the ones -- like Capriati, perhaps -- who just generally weren't paying attention.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor of ESPN.com