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When Coaches Cry
10/21/05
by Clay

In 1990, an undefeated University of Tennessee team hosted a mediocre University of Alabama team in Knoxville. I watched the game with my grandfather, who played football at Tennessee in the early 1930's. He didn't usually watch the games because doctors told him he would get too agitated. So instead, he had my uncle tape every game and would only watch it if the Vols won.

But on that day, his grandson was 11 and I insisted he watch a heavily-favored Tennessee team beat Alabama for what would have been the first time in five years. You can probably already tell what happened. Tennessee lost 9-6 on a last-second field goal. Almost immediately after, I started to cry because I hated Alabama and the Vols were supposed to win.

This did not please my grandfather.

"Is Johnny Majors crying?" he said."Men don't cry about football games."

Watching the field, I saw that then-Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors was, in fact, not crying. It was a valuable lesson, and from that moment on, I never cried over a football game. I wonder what fathers and grandfathers are telling their sons now that Florida Gators coach Urban Meyer cried after his team lost to LSU. Suddenly, the anti-crying homilies just got a little bit more difficult. I think we all know what has happened. Oprah Winfrey's emotive displays have conquered college football and we're a worse country for it.

First, there was no crying in baseball. Then, A League of Their Own was made and there was no crying. OK, so it was women's baseball, but the crying between the lines barrier was broken.

Then, Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams became sobbers after NCAA tournament losses and before you knew it, the basketball court had been breached by tear ducts as well. But surely, football ... football of all sports, would stand the test of quivering lips and shaking shoulders.

But the tears would not be denied.

The NFL walls came tumbling down as Dick Vermeil cried over everything: The last cuts for his football team, the season coming to a close, his eggs being scrambled instead of poached.

The last bastion of machismo was college football in the South. The SEC is the land of unabashed masculinity, stoic upper lips and where men would sooner be shot than be caught crying in public. A place where broken arms and legs were small impediments that didn't justify not playing football. A land where people believed college football was, and is, more important than trivial matters like life or death.

And then Urban Meyer slipped up and went all Oprah on us.

Can anyone imagine legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant crying over a loss or an arm amputation without sedatives? The SEC has crumbled and all of college football fandom is left wondering, "What has the world come to?"

After all this, we're just a bunch of sissies. Now that coaches have started to slip and slide over their own tears, it's left to us, the fans, to retain control over our emotions. Otherwise, I promise you, Oprah's going to be Verne Lundquist's nest broadcast booth partner. In an effort to reassemble the backbone of a sport and region, here are 11 reasons when a man may cry in a sports-related setting:

1. When a close family member dies at a sporting event or while watching a game. If they aren't close relatives, you can keep watching and don't need to cry. Close is defined as someone you might inherit money from.

2. If you're at a road game and your starting quarterback is not playing, and when you call your wife at home, the quarterback answers.

3. In baseball's seventh inning, basketball and football's fourth quarter, hockey's third period or at any other juncture when beer ceases to be sold at a sporting event.

4. If they are tears of unabashed joy. Such as would occur if an entire group of NFL cheerleaders suddenly forgot the tops to their cheerleading outfits or if Stephen A. Smith was no longer allowed to appear on television ever again.

5. If they are tears of laughter brought on by the sheer hilarity of an event. Such as those that might arise during Urban Meyer's appearance on a halftime Oprah show called "Coaches Have Feelings Too."

6. If you're at an Oakland Raiders game and when the guys with painted faces and spiked shoulder pads say to the guy who dresses like Darth Vader, "Unless you cry, I'm going to kill you."

7. If a dog heroically perishes while attempting to catch a Frisbee during a half-time contest. Also if the dog was named Lassie and had previously saved your life or aided you in your pursuit of sex.

8. Sports movies do not count as actual sporting events. So you can cry as much as you want during Hoosiers, The Natural and Bring It On. But you absolutely must cry, no excuses, in Varsity Blues when Billy Bob scores on the oop-te-oop.

9. If they are tears of mourning for sporting events you will never share. Such as when your best guy friend turns down playoff tickets because he has to spend "quality" time with his new girlfriend. These tears must be shed pre-game in the privacy of your vehicle while slapping the wheel in time to Blur's brilliant "Song No. 2."

10. If you are ever at a game and it dawns on you that you are wearing the jersey of a player who no longer plays for your team and Zubbaz pants. These tears will be indistinguishable from the ones that also will flow when you realize that no woman other than your mother will ever talk to you again without laughing.

11. If you're watching Monday Night Football and MTV's Laguna Beach keeps having commercials at the same time as MNF and you can't be certain whether LC is truly "102% over Steven" ... wait maybe that's just me.

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