In the fallout this week from the divorce filing in Miami by Alex Rodriguez’s estranged wife, there has been plenty of debate on what it says about Rodriguez.

Is he an adulterer? Is he a great Yankees ballplayer but bad husband and father? Is he really dating Madonna?

But I don’t know or care what her allegations say about A-Rod. Instead, I’m more concerned with what the attention to Rodriguez’s marital problems says about us.

In this appetite for salaciousness, celebrity and scandal in sports, I see yet another sign of the decline of civilization. I fear this is part of the dumbing down of America that was satirized in the cult film Idiocracy, which imagined a future where a bombastic professional wrestler is president – and it didn’t really seem that far-fetched.

OK, maybe that’s a bit much, but have we really come to the point where A-Rod’s divorce is worthy of so much consideration? In the context of sports, are the details of the personal lives of athletes, things that have nothing to do with performance or legalities, really all that relevant?

It sure seems that way. Sports are caught up in America’s obsession with celebrity and stupid stuff. There are countless blogs where the private happenings (and non-happenings) of athletes are held up for baseless speculation and mean-spirited ridicule.

Rodriguez is a sports figure whose celebrity transcends the game, and so when his wife makes allegations of infidelity in divorce filings and he’s linked to Madonna, tabloid sensationalism is what we get. This is the new era of sports, and it’s hard not to feel dumber for it.

Listen, I’m no killjoy. The fluff of celebrity has its place, even in sports, and I’d be lying if I said I never gave it attention. I’d just prefer it be a harmless, light diversion of dessert rather than the unsatisfying full course it has become.

I’m no hypocrite, either. This isn’t some newspaper guy railing against the decline of values and standards on the Internet. I know that in some cases the athletes invite this kind of attention, and I’m all for a free marketplace of ideas, even the dim ones.

And, anyway, it’s not like newspapers can take the high road anymore.

Last summer there were stories that tried to make something of Web pictures of former Heat forward James Posey, in which he may or may not have been wearing pants in someone’s home. It was speculated that these out-of-context pictures would hurt his free-agent value, never mind that Posey is a true professional.

Even when there’s a sports story buried somewhere in the fluff, like Jason Taylor’s awkward stab at celebrity, the focus ends up on the syrup. So you end up with countless column inches celebrating Taylor for Dancing with the Stars with hardly a mention of the real issue of whether he was neglecting the day job that pays him millions.

Now we have A-Rod allegedly carrying on with other women while his wife claimed “emotional abandonment” for her and their two children. These are not issues to take lightly, of course, and it would be great if it led to some useful discussion about athletes, fidelity and family, but no one really cares about that kind of stuff, do they?

Instead, they just care about the scandal and seediness of it all. What does that say about us?