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"That Jim Brown. He says he isn't Superman. What he really means is that Superman isn't Jimmy Brown!"
-Anon.
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Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
-Jimmy Breslin
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A winner never whines.
-Paul Brown
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First there are those who are winners, and know they are winners. Then there are the losers who know they are losers. Then there are those who are not winners, but don't know it. They're the ones for me. They never quit trying. They're the soul of our game.
-Paul William "Bear" Bryant
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“When I went out on the field to warm up, I would manufacture things to make me mad. If someone on the other team was laughing, I'd pretend he was laughing at me or the Bears. It always worked for me."
-Dick Butkus
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If I was smart enough to be a doctor, I'd be a doctor. I ain't, so I'm a football player.
-Dick Butkus
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I worked hard at becoming [a professional football player], just like society says you should. It said you had to be fierce. I was fierce. Tough. I was tough.
-Dick Butkus
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I want to be recognized as the best-no doubt about it. When they say all-pro middle linebacker, I want them to mean Butkus!
-Dick Butkus
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Few people get to earn a living at what they like to do and there are hazards in any profession. Football is something I was made for. I gave the game all I could for as long as I could. I guess my only regret was that my career was too short.
-Dick Butkus
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"I wouldn't ever set out to hurt anyone deliberately unless it was, you know, important —like a league game or something."
-Dick Butkus
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Every team is beatable, you know.
-Tom Coughlin
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Football isn't a contact sport, it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.
-Duffy Daugherty
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When your are playing for the national championship, it's not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.
-Duffy Daugherty
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Yeah, maybe if we make that extra point we go into overtime ... But if I make that last throw, that's what Brett Favre is all about. ... When called upon, I expect to make those plays. So, yeah, I feel like I let this team down.
-Brett Favre
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I didn't know what to expect coming into this year. There were a lot of question marks, and I think that's obvious now. Can we overcome it? Time will tell.
-Brett Favre
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I'd write over and over, I will not throw into coverage.
-Brett Favre
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There wasn't a better teacher or mentor out there than Reggie White, on or off the field.
-Brett Favre
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I played a long time, had a great career up to this point, and can walk away with my head as high as anyone else.
-Brett Favre
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We're always trying to find ways to lower interceptions and stuff. My nature, I'm aggressive. I'll take shots, I'll take chances; therefore, you have mistakes.
-Brett Favre
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You're never guaranteed about next year. People ask what you think of next season, you have to seize the opportunities when they're in front of you.
-Brett Favre
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With each game I play, each season I play, everyone would agree with me, I'm running out of chances.
-Brett Favre
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I really believe this team has a lot of potential - whether it's this year or in years to come, I don't know.
-Brett Favre
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It's the hand we're dealt. We've put ourselves in this position, and we've got to find a way to get out of it.
-Brett Favre
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To me, the Heismans symbolize (how great of a team we were) because that success could not happen individually without being part of a great team. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with the right people. I had the opportunity to play with guys who made me look good.
-Archie Griffin
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My name is not only Archie Griffin, it's two-time Heisman trophy winner Archie Griffin. Once you win the award it's with you for the rest of your life, and I realize that and I'm proud of that. It changed my life.
Griffin received the Heisman Trophy as a junior in 1974 and again in 1975 -- the only player to win the award twice.
-Archie Griffin
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When speaking to young people, I tell them that it is important to make sure that your mind is right, so you will have something to fall back on.
-Archie Griffin
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What most people don't know is all the good things that the coach did without anybody knowing. For instance, he would grab up a couple of us players and go to the burn unit at Children's Hospital. He was always doing things like that and didn't want any publicity about it.
-Archie Griffin, (remembering coach Woodrow "Woody'' Hayes)
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The more I heard that I couldn't make it, the more I was determined to do it. I never liked being told that I'm not good enough to do this or that.
-Archie Griffin, The Archie Griffin Story (autobiography)
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"When in doubt, punt!"
-John Heisman
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"Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football."
-John Heisman
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How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.
-Lou Holtz
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When you win, nothing hurts.
-Joe Namath
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To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn't know where he is going.
-Joe Namath
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We're going to win Sunday. I guarantee it.
-Joe Namath
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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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"Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan. "
-Tom Landry
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Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable.
-Tom Landry
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I would say the most significant difference between modern-era receivers and previous receivers is the ones who were in my generation or earlier had to get a job after they got through playing. Today's player doesn't.
-Steve Largent, March 16, 2004
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"I just wrap my arms around the whole backfield and peel 'em one by one until I get to the ball carrier. Him I keep."
-Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb
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The Green Bay Packers never lost a football game. They just ran out of time.
-Vince Lombardi
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Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist; but football is only two things - blocking and tackling.
-Vince Lombardi
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If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.
-Ronnie Lott
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"The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer."
-John Madden
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Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.
-John Madden
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If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they've had a bad day.
-John Madden
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Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.
-John Madden
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The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.
-John Madden
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"When it's third and ten, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time."
-Max McGee
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The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.
-Joe Paterno
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Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.
-Joe Paterno
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I want to be remembered as the guy who gave his all whenever he was on the field.
-Walter Payton
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"Playing football in the morning is like eating cabbage for breakfast."
-Pressbox Maxim
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"I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master. "
http://www.barnard.edu/amstud/resources/strenuous/trletter.htm
-Theodore Roosevelt, from a letter to his oldest son, October 4, 1903
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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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"I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it."
-Gale Sayers
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"Some people think football is a matter of life and death...I can assure them it is much more serious than that."
-Bill Shankley, 'The Sunday Times' (London), October 4, 1981
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Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
-John Steinbeck
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Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
"1996, on coach Bill Walsh"
-Joe Theismann, source not found
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My thoughts just before the first real college game of my life: The honor of my race, family and self is at stake. Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will. My whole body and soul are to be thrown recklessly about the field. Every time the ball is snapped, I will be trying to do more than my part. Fight low, with your eyes open and toward the play. Watch out for crossbucks and reverse end runs. Be on your toes every minute if you expect to make good. (signed) Jack
Trice was injured in the game (Oct. 6) but doctors missed the severity of his injuries. At 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 8, 1923 he died of hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding throughout the abdomen.
-Jack Trice, letter written by Jack Trice to himself on the eve of the his Iowa State football game with Minnesota, October 5, 1923
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If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat.
-Herschel Walker
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My God given talent is my ability to stick with training longer than anybody else.
-Herschel Walker
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Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America's sinfulness.
-George Will
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"Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings."
-George Will
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Books about Football
