As a professional football player, I have known perfectly well from the day I started playing that every day I have to fight for my place.
I am not a movie star or a football player, I just do my thing.
I have never imagined doing anything other than football, but now, thinking about it coldly, if I hadn't been a footballer, I would have been a musician.
I want to be a great player. I don't want to play for the money. I don't want to play for fame. I'd just as soon no one knew who I was. I want to play football because it's football.
I learned a great many things in the Marines that helped me as a football coach. The Marines train men hard and to do things the right way, just as a football team must train.
I learned to play football in the streets. Every day of school, everyone came and played football. The street is a good school, and you learn many things there - resiliency, how to play against older players, and how to put up with or dodge kicks.
I didn't become a footballer to be famous, I became a footballer to be successful. I didn't want to be famous. Now people want to be famous. Why? Why would you want people following you about all day? I couldn't think of anything worse.
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.
My favorite sport, frankly, is college football. I'm a college football junkie, even though I'm associated with golf and like golf and have played it all my life.
I'm a very private person, and you have a lot of people looking into your personal life, away from football. That's the one thing that I don't like, but I always remember how lucky we are that we're playing football.
People are interested in pro football because it provides them with an emotional oasis; they don't want football to get involved in the same types of court cases, racial problems and legislative issues they encounter in the rest of American life.
I do like to just have football on, so I will TiVo, like, three or four games for the weekend, and I'll just turn it on when there's no live football on, just to have the background noise.
Football is my base; that's where I learned to be tough. I was a strong safety, and that's what I do: I hit people. The mentality is football, the wrestling is precision.
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.
My father was raised with brothers, he was a football player and a boxer, he was a chief petty officer in the Navy, he was a man of his times.
I feel fortunate that there was a place like the CFL where I could hone my skill and become a consistent football player and have a nice career.
I was a baseball player and a football player at Stanford, so I didn't play a lot of golf in college. I really started playing a lot after I turned pro and I had some time in the off-season.
Ray Kinsella: The Voice is back. Annie Kinsella: Oh, Lord. You're supposed to build a football field now?
As long as you've got serious investors who wish to put money into football, I applaud. It proves that football is attractive. What upsets me, what I find scandalous, is when clubs accept fools.
Football and me have never got on. My instinct and love for the harder end of contact had always meant I was perhaps a little too heavy-handed for football. Somehow it left me feeling unfulfilled.
As a kid, I was always mad - just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don't want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.
