The next MVP of the Super Bowl is just as likely to have been a full-time grocery store bagger last year as a Heisman Trophy winner.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Richard Nixon was a criminally insane Monster - Bill Clinton is a black-hearted Swine of a friend.
If Sunday is the Lord's day, then Saturday belongs to the Devil. It is the only night of the week when he gives out Free passes to the Late show at the Too Much Fun Club.
The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo-wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag-racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it.
Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?
I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.
Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.
Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world's best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.
All gamblers lose regularly, but they rarely discuss it in public. Losing is bad for the image, dude. Nobody buys Hot Tips from Losers. Remember that.
I have always hated bowling, and I don't mind admitting it.
'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head - big darkness, soon come - but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.
I have always loved blizzards, if only because of the driving experience - which is definitely an acquired taste.
I am more than just a serious basketball fan. I am a life-long addict. I was addicted from birth, in fact, because I was born in Kentucky and I learned, early on, that Habitual Domination was a natural way of life.
Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.
As long as I'm learning something, I figure I'm OK - it's a decent day.
I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.
Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.
March is a month without mercy for rabid basketball fans. There is no such thing as a 'gentleman gambler' when the Big Dance rolls around. All sheep will be fleeced, all fools will be punished severely... There are no Rules when the deal goes down in the final weeks of March. Even your good friends will turn into monsters.
There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.
The behavior of the crowd at Churchill Downs is like 100,000 vicious Hyenas going berserk all at once in a space about the size of a 777 jet or the White House lawn.
I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion - and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.
Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.
Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan - and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.
Gambling can turn into a dangerous two-way street when you least expect it. Weird things happen suddenly, and your life can go all to pieces.
I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.
I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory... And why not? Victory is good for you, and don't let anybody tell you different.
I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.
There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother's milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won't be any winners.
In my heart, I am always a Raider.
February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.
Rush Limbaugh is a lame professional swine, and he makes a good living at it. He is like a hired geek in some traveling backwoods carnival - the freaks who bite the heads off chickens - but Limbaugh is a modernized geek who thinks he can bite the heads off of people.
All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.
With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.
Remember this, folks - I am a Hillbilly, and I don't always Bet the same way I talk. Good advice is one thing, but smart gambling is quite another.
The only thing wrong with the NBA - or any other professional sport, for that matter - is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.
Justice is expensive in America. There are no Free Passes... You might want to remember this, the next time you get careless and blow off a few Parking Tickets. They will come back to haunt you the next time you see a Cop car in your rear-view mirror.
One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.
Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today's winners are tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.
Without gambling, I would not exist.
I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.
Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.
There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted.
Duke is an ugly word in Kentucky. Nothing in the world compares to the joy of beating those hateful swine from Duke.
I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
The Hell's Angels try not to do anything halfway, and anyone who deals in extremes is bound to cause trouble, whether he means to or not. This, along with a belief in total retaliation for any offense or insult, is what makes the Hell's Angels unmanageable for the police and morbidly fascinating to the general public.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.
The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot - and it's only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.
I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way - not by donations; I work at it.
