Football

We used to play football on the levee, with no shirts on in the summer - August in New Orleans - and my skin would turn red. They'd call me Redskin, Red Apache, then it turned around to Apache Red.

I don't think God cares a whole lot about the outcome. He cares about the people involved, but I don't think he's a big football fan.

The majority of the time, they take air out of the football. I think that, for me, is a disadvantage.

I've got no interest in football. My brother's a footballer, too, and I was dragged to the freezing pitch every week as a child. I don't see much glamour in it.

Football games on Friday nights followed by field parties every weekend was how I spent my high school years.

Basketball is my favorite sport, and I'm also a very passionate football fan.

I love the flow of the game. There's a certain fluidity to basketball. I don't enjoy watching baseball or football in the same way.

In Argentina, you do what your father does. If your father plays football, you play football. If your father plays polo, you play polo.

I take football as an avenue to different opportunities. Football is not using me, I'm using football.

I really do know football.

Bill Clinton is the greatest president of the 20th century because I played touch football with him.

But we're not supposed to talk anything besides football.

I'm more inclined to linger in the science pages of 'The Week' magazine. But my principle obsessions are still watching sitcoms and football.

I had no plans once I finished my football career, which was a problem, so I had to go looking for work. Television was the one area that it was easier to get a job than anywhere else.

I hear people saying 'the way the game should be played'. Rubbish. That's the worst saying in football. You win the game, then worry about the way it should be played.

I only started concentrating on football as a career when I left school at 18. I played golf for the Scottish and British boys' teams.

I think if Tottenham are going to be top four side, the fans and the club will need to get away from the philosophy of 'pretty football', that's got to go.

These guys live and breathe football, they get something out of going to the training ground every day.

Football's not just about scoring goals - it's about winning.

I didn't watch cartoons, I was too busy playing football.

I have had interviews and got close to taking a managerial job. I would consider going back into football.

I've got a great life that I really enjoy. But there is something chewing at me inside: that adrenaline rush from football, I miss that.

In hindsight, that time out of football gives you the hunger to want to get back to basics and play football.

I understand football. I have always been a good footballer, and that gets overlooked by most people.

The decisions I've made have not always been the most popular, but when I look back, I want to know I've played for good football teams.

When you're a kid that's all you want to do, go out and play football.

I don't want to be throwing the football on the front yard when I'm 75. I mean, I'm not opposed to men doing that. But I don't think it's gonna work for me.

Sometimes in football you have to hold your hand up and say, yeah, they're better than us.

You are responsible to each other because when you win a game of football, you only need eight players to perform well.

Well, football is a hard game, there's no denying it. It's a game that can bring out the worst in you, at times.

My construction business represents 10 or 20 times what I'll ever invest in football. But from the moment I bought the Chargers, I would become forever known as the owner of that NFL franchise.

I'm a huge Rugby Union fan, which is a bit like American football - but tougher.

I don't think the physical part of English football would be a problem. When you get the ball, you need to be ready. The defenders here are very tough. I like that.

I arrived in Milan when I was 18. But my time in Italian football helped me to mature.

I follow English football a lot and Ancelotti.

I love English football.

In football, nothing is certain, so it's no problem to return to Corinthians.

Acting has never been a thing that me and my dad have talked about. It's like footballers: when they get together, I bet the last thing they talk about is football.

It is well documented that I am a lifelong football fan. My love of the British game started with the 1966 World Cup.

I felt like I was better at football than I am in basketball.

I was recruited by every school in the country for football and basketball. And an incident happened in high school, and all that was taken away. No other teams, no other schools were recruiting me anymore.

My dad was a sports writer when I was younger and then he became just a general columnist. But I grew up with him literally getting into brawls with football coaches.

If you look at old football pictures, the jerseys were hanging, the sleeves were dangling, but now everything is tucked and tailored.

I loved playing football. In this particular match the ball happened to hit my right eye, the only one which I could see light and colour with.

You have different sorts of people in life, so why should it be any different in football?

You can't really get into regular football after you watch Australian rules football because it's just two different ends of the totem pole.

We know, in Wales or in England - you simply can't trust Labour on the NHS. In England, we are delivering for patients while Labour just use the NHS as a political football. We won't let them, we'll always fight for the NHS.

I grew up in Europe, and soccer was the first organized game I played. When we moved back to the U.S. in the middle of 4th grade, I switched to American football and stopped playing competitively until college, when I played intramurals.

I like to play football, read some books, study.

I'm definitely a football fan, so I try to stay up with how teams are doing, and you end up getting a lot of buddies that play on certain teams. I wouldn't say I watch too much of other quarterbacks.

The thing I like most about football is it's a meritocracy.

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.

Each game we approach like a final. Today it was the opening game at home, we won and showed outstanding football qualities. We will be preparing for the next game the same way.

I play fantasy basketball and fantasy football, soccer.

I met Jack Bruce, one of my heroes, in a studio while doing some recording. England had just beat Scotland in a big football match and I saw Jack trying to break into this refrigerator in the lounge, drunk out of his brain, and I didn't know what to say.

In the German football team players from different clubs need to get on with each other both on and off the pitch. In the grand coalition Christian Democrats and Social Democrats sit in the same boat and need to pull in the same direction.

You can relax more when you're playing a silly character than when you're playing a really rigid character. But to be fair, I think George Clooney is a bigger teenager than any of the 'Twilight' cast. He's the guy throwing a football at your head and then hiding around the corner, pretending it wasn't him!

With the club now in administration and concern about where the money for land sale has gone, I know there are huge commercial difficulties to be resolved, but I hope that football will once again become the most important issue.

I always told my dad I'd play professional football.

Football. It sounds simple, but it's always been the case - I don't see myself living without playing.

My brother was the one who really gave me the desire to follow in his footsteps. Also, it was really Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, the two Brazilian players, who also inspired me to a future in football.

It's true that the atmosphere here is quite different from the one in France. People live and breathe football here, and that's what I like. Every footballer wants to play in the Premier League.

The best thing about playing football is making fans happy. The supporters help us a lot out on the pitch.

I was just a kid who had arrived in the world of professional football and thought he could do anything he wanted. But I have learned from my mistakes. I have done everything to change, both on and off the pitch.

In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.

I have no ax to grind. I was lucky. I played. How many guys play high school, college football never play pro football?

I went to college to play football, not to study it.

I'm not like some guys who, if the Ravens lose, are ready to jump off the top of M&M Stadium. There are other things in life besides pro football.

The two saddest moments of my life were when my mother died and when I was told I couldn't play football for the Colts anymore.

The pride and presence of a professional football team is far more important than 30 libraries.

You see somebody on a football field make a great, athletic 70-yard run, but the athleticism is immeasurable. It's undoubtedly athletic, but compared to somebody else who did something else, how do you compare it? That's the great part of track and field. It's a test, but with results that you can compare to others.

As a kid, I thought movies were boring. My parents would hire VHS recorders for the weekend and watch Bollywood movies. I'd get bored and go out to Stoke Newington common to play football.

I am basically turning football players into sprinters for a while. When we first talked about it, I didn't know how my expertise could be used.

We are making a little portion of their brains be sprinters, they are 100 percent football players, but for these purposes, they must learn the proper way to run.

Being able to play basketball at a high level, adjusting to the ball in the air, quick feet, quick hands and all that stuff definitely translates to playing tight end in the National Football League.

I played basketball my whole life. It definitely helps. It translates to going up for rebounds and going up for balls in the end zone. Quick feet. It helps with getting in and out of your cuts. It definitely all translates to football.

I think that people that don't really understand the game of football and are just fans that think people just show up on Saturday and go, I don't think they understand the work that we put in here and what our schemes are and what we're trying to do.

It's everything to me. This is my life. I love football so much.

I've played this game since I was in second grade, and there's nothing more important to me than playing football.

Once you get into the NFL, it doesn't matter what draft pick you are, what round you are, if you're undrafted or not. It's football time again. The draft, all of that doesn't matter anymore.

The idea that I can provide for my mother and play at the highest level in the world for football and compete against the best guys in the world - it's a very exciting idea.

I did enjoy football, but the injury factor for me, you know, I had so many issues. I don't know how long my career would've been.

I wanted to go to college and play football.

I'm glad that I just played baseball, because I'm sure I had a much longer baseball career than I would've had a football career. I did miss football, but I didn't miss some of the injuries from football.

As a kid, I played my share of football in the street or in a vacant lot. When we were playing in the street, it was more touch football, so we didn't hit each other into cars.

Life doesn't stop with football.

It was a horrible, terrible, atrocious, offensive football game.

I am more mature now and know how to deal with certain situations in football. It's not all about highs, there are also lows, but I can deal with it. Football is a hard business.

I hope to get out before they start football next year.

If we can take young people who excel at the highest levels, put them on the same kind of pedestal as the all-state basketball player and the all-state football player, and begin to get the same kind of recognition, it will have a profound effect, and we are finding that it does.

The books I used to love as a kid, I used to read football books - and by that I mean soccer books - stories about boys in school who started to play football and then became the captain. I'd read them cover to cover. I just got lost in them.

There's something to be said for any boy growing up among lots of other boys who like to play basketball and football, while all I wanted to do was put on musicals. Mentally, I was always in my own world.

I take my life and put it on the football field, and I take the football field and put it in my life.

A football player at any level must set goals.

Guys are playing fantasy football, some guys I think even play fantasy baseball. I don't get involved with it. I have five kids, I just don't have time. Not that anything's wrong with the fantasy, but I just don't have time for it with my lifestyle.

If you're going to play football, why not be the best at it that you can be and fulfill your potential?

My goals in football helped make me disciplined and focused in all areas of my life.

The amazing thing about a football team is we can disagree and fight like brothers, but then we come back together. We are able to be open and honest about things that may offend us.

Actually, I'm for football. But I'm for intelligent football that enhances us rather than football that steals away who we are.

A child who plays a game of football for one season without any documented concussion - several months after that season, if you subject his brain to sophisticated psychological testing and radiological testing, functional MRIs, there is evidence of brain damage.

As a physician, I'm somewhat an advocate of patients. How come, before Mike Webster, no NFL player was told or knew that there was an intrinsic risk of brain damage from playing football?

I grew up in Africa, in Nigeria. I never knew, I never had any reasonable encounter with football. I saw football on Sky News. I thought there were people dressed like extraterrestrials, you know, like they were going to Mars or something, headgears and shoulder pads. And I wondered why, as a child, why did they have to dress that way.

I meet with retired football players. Some are well-dressed, some are well-spoken, but when you talk to them personally, they will admit to you that they are having problems. But they are managing their problems. They have impaired memory, they're having mood problems. They are being treated by their psychiatrists.

My son is 6. I wouldn't let my six-year-old son near any football field. And if any coach asks my son to play football, I'll sue that coach, and I'll sue the school.

Trust in the great American ingenuity. We can derive more intelligent, more brain-friendly ways we can play football.

Bavaro's probably as tough of a - physically and mentally as tough a football player as I've ever coached. So, I would put him in the rare category there.

When I was playing football, I was getting up to 240 pounds, and they wanted me to get to 260.

Everybody who knows anything about me knows all I ever wanted to do is play pro football. But I didn't have the talent, and I got hurt a lot. I'd do anything to be out on the field.

Free agency screws everybody's allegiances up. Whether it be football, baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it may be. It's really hard.

I have never, ever, received any taunts or any form of anti-Semitism. And I suppose being a Jewish football player with the Atlanta Falcons was no different than being a Baptist football player with the Atlanta Falcons. But in the back of your mind, you always expect something to happen.

I was a piece of meat. I was betrayed by the business of football.

Lets be honest: I'm an athlete, not an entertainer as much. So as an athlete, I am a guy who likes the physical confrontation of the football field. I like playing nose-guard, I like having two 350 pound guys trying to rip my head off.

The Georgia Dome was my home field, brother. There's no question about it. I played my first football game there as an Atlanta Falcon.

None of us are claiming that the statistical analysts understand the game of football as well as the football coaches do, or that our analysis should take precedence over the informed opinions of experts. I'm not saying that at all.

I've always slightly worried the kids who play football around my house. They know I'm an actor, but felt sorry for me because they'd never seen anything I've done.

I think there are a lot of good people, a lot of good football guys in the NFL.

The thing I really look for in this business is there are guys who are into football and there are guys who are in the profession for other reasons.

Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.

What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball.

I think one of the great things about a football season is that you see teams play in all types of environments, and if you can't handle one of them, you probably don't deserve to win anyway.

I had concussions as a kid playing football and basketball, and know what it feels like and to have someone say 'Just rub some dirt on it, and get back in there.'

Football is a fertility festival. Eleven sperm trying to get into the egg. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper.

Anytime that the Arizona Cardinals play football, I scream at the top of my lungs at the television. And I have certain dances that I do.

I have been a fan all my life, but now I have been out of football for over 10 years, and out of baseball for a little over six years and I don't go to games.

The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.

I attribute my entire football career, as far as getting me started, getting me interested, keeping me that way was my father. He went to every game even though he was crippled and wasn't real healthy.

Some of the money going to the rookies can now be spent on people who have proved their worth. After all, the average playing life of a pro football player is about eight years and it is only fitting that the veterans get something for their efforts.

Here I was, this good guy that played football, I was gonna go play in college but I had a bad senior year. But I played guitar in assemblies whenever I could.

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It's part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.

All my life, I've been right next to a football field. I never knew nothing else.

Football has always been a big part of my life. Almost from the day I was born, playing and coaching football were all I really ever wanted to do.

I've never made football my priority. My priorities are my faith and my dependence on God.

When I won the world championship, in 1972, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.

When I'm on television, I think that I appeal to the everyday guy, 'cause that's who I am. The guys who go to the football games on the weekends are my viewers, for sure.

In the summertime, I played Little League baseball, football in the fall, basketball in the winter.

If we want the best pitcher, let's get Bobby Feller. If want the best football player, let's get Jimmy Brown, the best basketball player, let's get Bill Russell. If we want the guy who can do the best job for the United States - let's get Donald Trump.

The first ninety minutes of a football match are the most important.

I'm more akin to football than I think anything else because that's what I played in high school.

I was kind of torn between playing music or playing college football. I was going to college and really focusing on my music career.

But when you lose a family member or something tragic happens, that stays with you forever. You never get over it. Knowing that you have to deal with that for the rest of your life... Football is important, but not as important as you once thought it was.

I may be a successful football player, but I feel like such a failure.

If you grew up in a household with a football coach who looks like a drill sergeant, you would think you would be tough.

In spite of reports about playing with various teams, I'm enjoying retirement with my family and have no plans to play football.

In this case, I realize that, unlike when I was 22 years old, I realize now that football will not go on forever, it is a small part of your life.

That's kind of how I approach life and football, why dwell on something that's hasn't happened.

The town, the team, it's a family. That has helped. For some people who have had to deal with some of the problems I have had to deal with don't have football as an out.

Well family is obviously the most important. There was a time when I thought football was the most important.

Football is so barbaric. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking by playing it. I feel almost like I escaped from boot camp.

I had sacrificed my entire life to play football.

If you can miss getting up in the morning and running into a wall, I miss playing football. I'll never be a frustrated athlete.

I'm a big fan of Coach Dorrell. I watched UCLA football for many, many years. I've grown accustomed to the Pac-10 style.

The saddest day of my life was the day I didn't get to play football anymore.

Wrestlers are a bunch of wanna-be football players.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

Football is all I know.

People ask me about my interests outside football, but I haven't really got any.

I was a football fan before I became a rugby fan.

I enjoy going on hikes, and I enjoy the occasional yoga. The one thing I'm good at athletically - and I don't know if I'm good at it anymore because I haven't done this in a while - I can throw a pretty good spiral in football, but I have no idea how to play.

I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.

As long as we're winning football games, I'm happy.

Football is a game you're supposed to have fun in.

I have great respect for Greg Knapp, who was my quarterbacks coach in Denver for three years. He taught me so much about playing quarterback in the NFL and made me a better football player.

I will always do what's best for the football team.

My job is to protect the football and score points and lead this offense on drives to score points.

You can't take a single day for granted in the National Football League. Every single day, you need to earn your spot on the roster.

Nobody is that thick-skinned that it doesn't hurt you. Still, you always know what happens in football. I have got used to criticism, I suppose, having been high profile with England and Man U.

We were younger. And it's basically like looking at football classics. You see things that you did, you see things that you could've done better and you think about all the good relationships that you had with the cast.

Some of the most innovative things in football I see at high school games. It's not the play - it's when you run it. The right time.

We never had anybody who froze to death playing football. You probably had somebody who died from heat stroke playing football.

I learned the major difference between college and pro football. In the pros, you're up against a top receiver almost every minute of time. In college, maybe one comes along every third game.

Because I was small, I was getting the hell kicked out of me playing football.

I do not know a lot about football. I guess I'm a Patriots fan because I'm from Boston? But I'm getting to know a lot more about it, and I'm finding it fascinating.

I was a baseball guy. Mom wouldn't let me play football when I was little because she was scared I'd get hurt. So, I finally convinced her to let me play in 7th grade.

It wasn't really until the 10th or 11th grade when I started to play well, and football took the place of baseball, which was my love when I was five years old. I don't know what happened, baseball just got boring to me, I guess.

I grew up playing sports, football, basketball, baseball, everything, and acting was such a different environment and different world for me.

I grew up trying to be like my idols, and one of the main people in my life was my father. He played football, and when your father is telling stories about the game he played... Everybody wants to be like their father.

I see myself not only as a football player, but an entertainer and icon.

I majored in theater at San Diego State. My one eye was on football, and my other eye was on Hollywood.

I love baseball. And American Football, too. But not rugby.

I play a lot of sports. I played football for 12 years, I like tennis, I surf, I snowboard, and I ski. I always like to do an activity.

I love sporting events and popcorn and pizza and being outside, like at a baseball or football game. I love amusement parks, going to ride roller coasters.

Even at North Dakota State, football is a big deal.

Football is football, I don't care if you're doing it in Division II, NAIA, or in the SEC or anything in between.

Playing football in Fargo has a total big-time feel. Everyone says it's FCS and it's a smaller school, but in Fargo, North Dakota, and in the state of North Dakota, NDSU football is the real deal.

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

Freshman year, I was 95 pounds and 4 feet 10 inches. So you can imagine what my football uniform looked like - my shoulder pads were bigger than my body!

I also watched a lot of football and sports. I haven't had much time to watch too much TV lately.

I sail, scuba dive, play football, basketball.

I've always been like that. I was a tomboy when I was a kid, so I was always playing baseball and basketball and football and stuff as a kid with the boys.

When all the girls were getting all made up and getting into all that girl stuff in junior high I was out playing softball or touch football with the guys.

I want to play for Arsenal. When you see football all around the world, you see very few teams who play the way that we play. I just enjoy it. I feel it is my home now.

My perfect first date? Maybe a concert or a football game. That would be my ideal first date, but would the girl like it? I don't know.

I play American football every Saturday, which I find calming.

I have played football all my life, and my dad went to see Manchester United in 2005. Since then, I have been a fan.

Sophomore year, I got hit in the stomach playing football, and I was out of school for four months. I was in the hospital for two and then out of school for two.

I've always negotiated the world very physically, from football to tussling at the playground to taking my clothes off.

Most of the time I meet my trainer at the gym and we do a lot of everything: weights circuit with cardio, football drills, sprinting with weights on the treadmill.

Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.

I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation - I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, 'cause you'd turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.