In the summer of 1963, my second with 'Sports Illustrated,' Jerry Tax, the basketball editor, got the Celtics' Frank Ramsey, the NBA's first famous sixth man, to do a piece for the magazine revealing some of the devious little tricks of his trade. Things like surreptitiously holding an opponent's shorts - nickel-and-dime stuff.
— Frank Deford
Quickness and momentum. You take the whole last generation of sports, listening to them, even reading about them, watching the games, analyzing them, arguing about them, instant-replaying them, second-guessing them, and all you'll distill from them is quickness and momentum.
You can stand at a bar and scream all you want about who was the greatest athlete and which was the greatest sports dynasty, and you can shout out your precious statistics, and maybe you're right, and maybe the red-faced guy down the bar - the one with the foam on his beer and the fancy computer rankings - is right, but nobody really knows.
It's fascinating, isn't it, that whereas so many of our statues have been of military leaders, now it may well be sports stars who are the ones more likely to be so honored.
NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture.
By coincidence, this particular tiny show on earth that consists entirely of me talking about sports on NPR is also folding its tent flaps this May of 2017. Yes, this is my swansong, my farewell, my last hurrah. Adieu, adios, arrivederci, auf wiedersehen.
I checked on the Internet this morning, and I realized that with five individual world titles, I was level with my elders Florian Rousseau and Arnaud Tournant, who were the sprint leaders in France when I started at the French Institute of Sports and taught me everything. I had the chance to overtake them, and I did it.
— Francois Pervis
In sports, teams win and individuals don't.
— Fran Tarkenton
That's what I'd like to do on the President's Council. Make sports and athletics available to every youth in America, not just one day a week like it was for me, but every day.
— Florence Griffith Joyner
I have to wear two sports bras when I do my cardio. It takes a lot to hold these puppies up!
— Fergie
I have fought all over the world, and I am excited to be in 'EA Sports MMA' because this game is going to show the global appeal of mixed martial arts.
— Fedor Emelianenko
I love sports. I love motorcycles. Just like most guys.
— Fabio Lanzoni
Girls can be funny and play sports and show how to do the perfect soccer kick if they want.
— Eva Gutowski
I just mentioned how my sports car is European, and that is the extent of how I like Europeans, is in my cars.
— Ethan Carter III
Three events. Three gold medals. I was news, big news, in the sports world.
— Esther Williams
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
— Erma Bombeck
I was an athlete when I was younger and played a lot of sports, including golf, but I always ended up throwing around my clubs in frustration.
— Eric Winter
I can remember going to see the minor league Orioles. Until I was 15 years old, we'd go down with 3,000 people to watch them play the Syracuse Chiefs or the Jersey City Little Giants. That's what passed for Baltimore sports.
First and foremost, Howard Cosell is sports. There are all these people, these fans, who claim that when Cosell does a game on television, they turn off the sound on the TV and listen to the radio broadcast. Oh, sure. You probably know critics in your neighborhood who vow the same thing. Well, too bad for them.
I get very envious of my general news colleagues who are always being handed sexy new stuff like global warming, China, and Donald Trump, while my sports colleagues and I must be eternally satisfied with the same old home-court advantage, soccer, and momentum.
Statues of sports stars are all the rage - especially in baseball.
So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.
I remember, when I was growing up in Baltimore, we'd get on a streetcar and go down to see the Orioles, and for a couple of bucks, you could get a pretty good seat. Kids can't do that anymore. So I think that changes the whole nature of sports.
I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.
— Francine Prose
You see now more girls getting involved in their sports because they can see it on TV and see these people playing, and I think - the more and more it's exposed and is out there - it will continue to grow and grow. They watch it on TV and think, 'Well, that could be me!'
— Fran Kirby
As a kid in the projects, I always looked forward to spring break. We'd either have cousins visiting us for the week from up north, and we'd all play sports together, or sometimes I'd go to Vero Beach and hang with my cousins there.
— Flo Rida
I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself.
— Ferdinand Porsche
I have always been a movie buff and had no interest in any games and sports. I do not even watch cricket, which is one of the favourite games of most of my friends. However, I have become a wrestling fan after 'Dangal.'
— Fatima Sana Shaikh
That's the biggest problem with boxing in the United States. They do not promote it like they used to, when it used to be Howard Cosell and they showed it on 'Wide World of Sports.' Everybody knew all the fighters. Everybody was looking forward to the year when the Olympics came on.
— Evander Holyfield
The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children - children with mental retardation - can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.
— Eunice Kennedy Shriver
Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.
The only way to prove that you're a good sport is to lose.
— Ernie Banks
I played sports growing up in high school.
— Erin Heatherton
When I got injured, I think I was starting to sense that there was more to the world than just sports. This dream of playing professional soccer probably wasn't the best track for me.
— Eric Swalwell
I'm a writer. I'm moonlighting on television. I never made any pretensions to that. As much as I like being on 'Real Sports,' I have been a writer since I was a little boy, and that's still my first love.
The only thing we know for sure about superiority in sports in the United States of America in the 20th century is that Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics teams he led stand alone as the ultimate winners.
We exalted that Michael Phelps-consecrated water. Rose petals were strewn in Peyton Manning's path when he retired. But hey, that's natural. As we should, we admire those in any craft, no less so in sports, who appear out of nowhere to achieve remarkable feats.
All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods.
The wonderful thing about delivering sports commentary on NPR was that because it has such a broad audience, I was able to reach people who otherwise had little or no interest in sport - especially as an important part of our human culture.
Every now and then, I get a free ticket from someone, and I look at the price, and it says $800, and I'm thinking, 'A thousand dollars to see,' I said, 'There's no ballgame in the world worth that kind of money,' and yet the attendance for sports is more than it ever has been.
I wasn't into sports, but I was really into Shakespeare.
— Frances McDormand
Mayweather Promotions - we are the past, the present, and the future of sports and entertainment, and everybody knows Mayweather's pay is better.
— Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
I was never a troublemaker, but I also was never a nerdy kid. I was never a cool kid or a sports kid. At lunchtimes, I never fit in with any cliques, so I'd end up just walking around the school by myself, listening to music.
— Finn Jones
Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate success for an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Sports shoes don't win races. Athletes do.
— Felix Dennis
Buenos Aires is less than an hour's drive from the ranch, and in the evening, we might meet friends for dinner there. I get recognised a bit, but I'm lucky that polo isn't as popular as other sports.
— Facundo Pieres
But I was very much into sports when I was a child.
— Eva Herzigova
I was such a dork in high school. I like - I played sports. I played in the symphony. I auditioned all the time. I was thrown off the sports teams for auditioning all the time.
— Ethan Peck
The newspapers loved pinup pictures of pretty young swimmers, and as a national champion, I got more than my share of space in the sports pages.
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
— Ernest Hemingway
I don't cheer for anyone because my job is obviously more important, but the reason why I got into sports is because of my father. He's a giant sports fan and we are from New England, so he cheered for the Celtics and the Red Sox.
— Erin Andrews
