FAMOUS (AND NOT-SO-FAMOUS) AMERICAN FOOTBALL QUOTES
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In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself."
- Fortune, to Rudy in the motion picture, "Rudy".
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Football is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbalized, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time.
-- Arnold Mandell
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"If two hitherto rival football teams, under the influence of brotherly love, decided to co-operate in placing the football first beyond one goal and then beyond the other, no one's happiness would be increased"
-- Bertrand Russell
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Randy Moss , explaining the no-look, over-the-shoulder lateral to Moe Williams for a 59-yard touchdown: "It' a once-in-a-lifetime thing that only happens every so often."
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Ray Lewis : "Pain is only temporary, no matter how long it lasts."
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Gary Anderson , FG kicker: "One thing I've learned over the years is sometimes if you make kicks early in the game, you don't have to make them late."
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Paul Tagliabue , NFL Commissioner: "I'm a firm believer that all sports will eventually be global. Someday, we may have a quarterback from China named Yao Fling."
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Maybe a good rule in life is never become too important to do your own laundry.
- Barry Sanders
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God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach. -- Heywood Broun
It's never just a game when you're winning. -- George Carlin
I think of football as a sport the way ducks think of hunting as a sport.
-- Bill Watterson
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Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of your aggressions without going to jail for it.
-- Heywood Hale Brown
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Let's face it, you have to have a slightly recessive gene that has a little something to do with the brain to go out on the football field and beat your head against other human beings on a daily basis.
-- Tim Green
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At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact.
-- George Plimpton
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One of the great disappointments of a football game is that the cheerleaders never seem to get injured.
-- Author Unknown
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I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me.
-- Anna Quindlen
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Watching football is like watching pornography. There's plenty of action, and I can't take my eyes off it, but when it's over, I wonder why the hell I spent an afternoon doing it.
-- Luke Salisbury
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There are two kinds of people in the world, Notre Dame lovers and Notre Dame haters. And, quite frankly, they're both a pain in the ass.
-- Dan Devine, former Notre Dame football coach
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I have seen women walk right past a TV set with a football game on and - this always amazes me - not stop to watch, even if the TV is showing replays of what we call a "good hit," which is a tackle that causes at least one major internal organ to actually fly out of a player's body.
-- Dave Barry
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Trying to maintain order during a legalized gang brawl involving 80 toughs with a little whistle, a hanky and a ton of prayer.
-- Anonymous referee, explaining his job
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Speed is not your fastest, but your slowest man. No back can run faster than his interference.
-- Jock Sutherland
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When it comes to football, God is prejudiced - toward big, fast kids.
-- Chuck Mills
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Australian Rules football might best be described as a game devised for padded cells, played in the open air.
-- Jim Murray
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The tactical difference between Association (American) Football and Rugby with its varieties seems to be that in the former the ball is the missile, in the latter men are the missiles.
-- Alfred E. Crawley, 1913
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What about football? Is it a sport or a concussion?
~Jim Murray, Los Angeles Times
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"There will always be hope for our country as long as more people watch 'Monday Night Football' than 'Friends."
-- Michael Logsdon
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"Update: Last week 4.7 million more people watched 'Friends' than 'Monday Night Football.' I think I'm going to move to Canada ."
--Michael Logsdon
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"A lot of fans were drawn to me because they knew that whatever the score was, I was going to run as hard as I could on every play. You don't have that now, you have guys waiting for next week or even next year."
-- Walter Payton
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"He was too small for football and he got tired of sitting on the bench all the time."
-- Ray Prefontaine about son, Steve Prefontaine
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"Confidence is a very fragile thing."
-- Joe Montana
"Like many athletes, I played in college for the chance to play in the pros. In the years since I retired, I've come to realize that the education I got in college was for life. I will have it forever and for that I am incredibly grateful."
-- Pat Toomay
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"George was watching NFL playoff, The drama, appreciating, Supposedly he gagged on a pretzel. Or was it the officiating?"
-- Blackie Sherrod
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"Tom Landry wore a coat, a tie, a hat and an expression that revealed nothing as he stood on the sideline, arms folded, watching his Dallas Cowboys at work. Hockey pucks show more emotion. He was the Great Stoneface, but nobody gives you grief about that if you go to five Super Bowls and win a couple of them." -- Ron Green, Sr.
"You don't have to win it, just don't lose it."
-- Ray Lewis, Baltimore linebacker to quarterback, Elvis Grbac
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"Playing football in the morning is like eating cabbage for breakfast."
– Press box maxim
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"Tis the day before Christmas and all through the league, The upcoming playoffs are filled with intrigue. Who will be left standing when it's all said and done? Who will proclaim, 'We did it, we won!'?"
-- A Christmas poem for the gridiron prone by Bob Frantz
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"So instead of the Super Bowl, we've got the Stupor Bowl. Two once-proud teams, now 0-4 and stumbling through the season like zombies. And if you think the Cowboys are bad (and they are), the Redskins are so bad that every few plays you have to put a mirror under their noses to make sure they're still breathing."
-- Tony Kornheiser
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"Baseball and football are very different games. In a way, both of them are easy. Football is easy if you're crazy as hell. Baseball is easy if you've got patience. They'd both be easier for me if I were a little more crazy—and a little more patient."
-- Bo Jackson, Raiders running back and Royals outfielder
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"If my mother put on a helmet and shoulder pads and a uniform that wasn't the same as the one I was wearing, I'd run over her if she was in my way. And I love my mother."
-- Bo Jackson
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"It is better to give a lick than receive one. If anybody got in my way, I tried to run right through them."
-- Bo Jackson
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"No talking. Talking doesn't play football, talking isn't going to make you practice harder or play harder."
-- Ken Simonton
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"When I get the ball, for some reason I see holes. I'm not really sure how."
-- Mike Bass, playing for University of Hawaii
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"Distance running to a professional athlete in my day was five laps around the field. And you stopped each lap to take your pulse."
-- Lynn Swann, Pittsburgh Steeler
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"My knees look like they lost a knife fight with a midget."
-- E.J. Holub, former Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, on his 12 knee operations
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"How'd you like that one, God?"
-- Joe Don Looney, talented running back who could also kick, after sending up a sixty-yard punt during a practice session with Baltimore Colts.
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"A good back makes his own holes. Anybody can run where the holes are."
-- Joe Don Looney, running back from Oklahoma , first draft pick by New York Giants in 1963, later traded to Baltimore Colts, giving his reason for missing training camp and his refusal to learn plays.
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"It's probably similar to being in New York City and having a cab driver behind you and you're driving too slow. It's not the most pleasant thing."
-- Barry Sanders, on what defensive backs who played against him compared him to.
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"Excuse me, but it's always been an emotional game. Did Sam Huff do a dumb dance when he knocked down Jim Brown? Did Walter Payton need to celebrate all those touchdowns? But now, with players having a highlight mentality, it's out of control."
-- Leonard Shapiro
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"I was the originator of smack. Some guys rattle with smack; with other guys it rolls right off their shoulders like nothing. "
-- Deacon Jones
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"Football is a very short-term proposition. Football really prepares you for nothing. The only thing I got out of football was the ability to work hard, and that's it."
-- Gale Sayers
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"I had two heroes, John Wayne and Roy Rogers. Then one day I saw Jim Brown and I said, that's the way I want to look. Jim Brown represents a dream come true for every young man who wanted to be something, especially in the '60's. We saw in him everything we wanted to be."
-- George Foreman
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"That Jim Brown. He says he isn't Superman. What he really means is that Superman isn't Jimmy Brown!"
-- Attributed to an NFL player who played against Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns.
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"Hey, we're like soldiers. Would you go to the Roman army and ask them if they thought they were going to win the battle? If I didn't think we could win, I wouldn't be here. I'd stay home and get fat."
-- Ken Simonton, OSU tailback before the 30th Fiesta Bowl
"Everyone has their nightmares of the Donut Bowl." -- Neal Zoumboukos, UO offensive line coach speaking of the 1983 Civil War, which ended in a 0-0 tie.
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"I got into a few games after they were hopelessly won or hopelessly lost, you know, when they put the substitutes in, and finally the water boy, and then me. That is the way it worked."
-- Richard M. Nixon, explaining his football playing days at the dedication of Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in Utica
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"You're kind of numb after 50 shots to the head."
-- Jim Harbaugh, played four years with University of Michigan , seven seasons for Chicago Bears before becoming a free agent and going to Indianopolis.
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"When we won the league championship, all the married guys on the club had to thank their wives for putting up with all the stress and strain all season. I had to thank all the single broads in New York ."
-- Joe Namath
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"If you aren't going all the way, why go at all?"
-- Joe Namath
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"Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up"
-- Knute Rockne
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