men have a hard time with emotions. for the most part we’re not suppose to show them. it’s ok until we have to be tough guys, and then it’s either bottle it up more or let it out in a horrible howl.

im lucky, i have a job where i can just yell and yell and yell. and the more times that i do it the more the people love me and the more the kids respond. this wouldn’t work in a place like, say, the nba, where the people i would be yelling at are all millionaires and half of them have their names on the sides of their sneakers, but in college athletics, where i presently am employed, i can get away with it. like i said, im lucky.

i didn’t always used to be like this.

i used to be a mellow dude. i used to just kick back and let life happen and then i found out that for the most part life likes to eat up the mellow people for lunch and the assholes are the great white sharks that roam this dirty hole.

my first wife didn’t really appreciate this change and left me pretty early into our deal.

it was too bad too because we had such an incredible sex life you wouldn’t even believe it. not only was she the prettiest girl in town but in the sack she was an animal, and at times deeply loving. for a while she was even my best friend. but something happened one day and i snapped and let her have it, verbally, and the next day i promised that i would never say those sorts of things to her again. and a month later something happened again and i wrote her the nastiest note i ever wrote anyone.

as i got older things only got worse.

im a man of dozens of successes and very little regrets and if there was one regret that i still have to this day it’s saying all the nasty things that i said to her on those two occasions because even though im happily married right now, to be honest with you, i blew it with the best girl on earth and it gnaws at me every day.

but im lucky. i can take it out on the officials and my players and the press and the necks of power forwards, and of course chairs.

but some scars never heal.

and some people never get any better.

just older and grayer.

and some, like me, just get meaner.

now normally i don’t answer these sorts of questions, but tony asked me today to list my three favorite movies of the year 2002. i don’t know what it is about that knucklehead, but i like him. not in a gay way. i don’t know, i just smile whenever i see him or get a phone call from him. so what the heck.

1. Rabbit Proof Fence

2. 25th Hour

3. Gangs of New York

oliver willis, valley girl