I have an embarrassing confession – Last night in bed with my wife, I was extremely fast on the draw. How fast? My wife said, “I think you just broke Rick Pitino’s record.” Ouch!

She wasn’t referring to any Big East road win streak, or sales of self-help books. It was Pitino’s confession last year in court, during his extortion lawsuit against a woman whom he had been involved in an affair with, that the Louisville Cardinals head basketball coach testified under cross-examination that their sexual encounter lasted “no more than 15 seconds”.

It’s difficult for me to write about this. I owe much gratitude to Rick Pitino for what he did for the Commonwealth. He took a job that nobody in their right mind would have taken, and brought the University of Kentucky’s basketball program back from the brink of death. I’m also not interested in giving lectures. However…..

I am fascinated by the often over-looked small details in tragedies –The little innocuous decisions that people make while circling the drain. For instance, last summer when Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, and his cohorts were preparing to burn 200 Qurans, why wasn’t anyone questioning the quantity of holy books that they had chosen to go Ray Bradbury on? 200 books won’t even get you small mound of kindling. I would think the number 1000 is the minimum amount of books needed, if you really want to make a statement.

Personally, if life had cast me as a delusional xenophobic patriot pastor, I would have suggested a number that has a bit of history to it, like 666. That would have really driven the point across. But that’s just me – Mr. Show Business!

So, when I heard that they planned to burn that pathetic number of Qurans, I began to ask questions: Was this small town church without sufficient funds to purchase a bonfire worthy quantity of books? Did the local Mosque bookstore/gift shop only have 200 copies for sale? Did the church receive a discount for purchasing 200? Does the number 200 have any significance in the bible? Would 300 Qurans made anymore of an impression? At $6.99 (current Amazon.com price for a low budget Quran), 200 copies would have been a $1398 purchase on line. Does that qualify for free shipping?

Its those kind of things that keep me awake at night. Rick Pitino’s embarrassing confession, even more so. What was he thinking when he said that?

I would figure, that during that moment in court, there wasn’t too much that Pitino could say on the witness stand that could salvage his reputation, marriage, or pride. I must assume that his job was also in jeopardy, and he realized that book deals and TV commercials were now a thing of the past.

So, why embarrass yourself further by admitting that you blew it all (no intended pun) for a sexual encounter that last less than 15 seconds? Why not at the very least, lie your ass off about the duration? I see it this way: The only salvageable aspect of his reputation would be the sexual part. What better way to let the world know that you still got game, than bragging about yourself to a courtroom full of reporters? I say, go for it on the witness stand and let them know that even though you’re no longer a Diaper Dandy, you can still take it to the rack (again, no intended pun).

Maybe I missed some vital information when I perused Pitino’s self-help book, “Success is a Choice”. I wonder if it’s my fault for reading it in the bathroom, where sometimes I lose focus, with the fan going, the fumes and the grunting. I feel like I missed an important lesson about being humble and honest, because if it had been me up there during that Cardinal red letter witch hunt, I would have grinned a sheepish grin, and broken off this bit of dialogue for the sea of newspaper reporters and lawyers before me….

“Well, if you must know…. The encounter lasted just over of two hours, thirty-five minutes and took place on three different tables, the maitre-D stand, a bar stool, in the parking lot, and for a brief moment, inside the restaurant’s extensive walk-in freezer. I keep very specific records of all my sexual conquests, and for duration, this one ranks among my personal top 20. What’s that you say? Why yes, I do know rock-n-Roll icon Sting, formally of the Police, and now a tantric sex guru. How did you guess?”

Rick Pitino’s books are not as expensive as they used to be. In fact, Amazon has slashed their prices to the point where they are now comparable to a paperback edition of the Quran. I’m going to contact the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, and suggest that they return the un-torched Qurans, (do Mosque bookstores have easy return policies?) and use the money to purchase 666 copies of Coach Pitino’s “Lead to Succeed – 10 Traits of Great Leadership in Life”. They’re in Gainesville after all, and I’m sure they’d jump at the chance to burn anything remotely connected to Kentucky.

Remember back when the SEC was great in Basketball and Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas teams battled Pitino’s Wildcats for supremacy on the national stage? The Razorback’s defense was so relentless, that it was given the name, Forty Minutes of Hell. My wife has a new name for my sexual prowess, and I suppose that the name also applies to Rick Pitino – Fifteen Seconds of Swell.