Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was named first-team Jersey Shore by the Asbury Park Press, the paper I used to deliver as a young boy. I got to Houston and Coach Williams invited me to walk on the golf team. I was the 18th man on an 18-man golf team.
The NCAA model is outdated. If Steve Serby's a great player in high school, and an agent wants to represent you and wants to advance you money as a loan based on the fact that you're gonna be a high draft choice, so be it.
The Super Bowl is the biggest event in America, the biggest event in television. The preparation and all of the behind-the-scenes detail is immense. The Final Four is just a fraction behind that in terms of the preparation.
As my father went through a really, really long and dark period of his health declining and falling deeper into the abyss, I knew I was never going to let my family and my children experience this without any long-term care.
No matter the event, a Super Bowl, an NFL game, a rank-and-file golf tournament, there is a demand when you are live and exposed to try to get it right and do justice to the event. That's the way I have always approached it.
I told them that I cannot lie when a writer asks me what's my feeling not doing the game. I said I have to be honest. And my honest reply to you is, obviously, I'm a loyal team player. I will go where my bosses tell me to go.
You're open to minute-by-minute criticism which comes via Twitter, that starts seeping its way into your head, and it's easy to let that affect how you do the game... it was a nice moment when I got to take that off my phone.
I don't think we know who a lot of these athletes are. We think we do, but they're never allowed to be themselves. Because the minute they try, people are saying, What's wrong with him? Why is he drawing attention to himself?
Any time a running back reaches the age of 31 or 32, he has to lose a step. No one is a freak of nature. No one is going to be able to take the pounding a running back has to take over a 10- or 12-year career and not lose a step.
The best thing anyone can do is be himself. Everyone was made different by God, and that's the way it should be. And if I were a writer or an announcer starting out, I don't think I'd imitate anybody. I'd try to be whatever I am.
Every little crazy dream that I had has come true, and more. And I'm always mindful that this is not a birthright, that one day I would have the chance to come to Augusta every year. Just a crazy, really, almost obsession for me.
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.
Only one time have I had Twitter open when I was doing a game, and after that I took it off my phone. I said, 'This is so counterproductive. I'm actually reacting to people reacting to what I'm saying, and it can't work that way.'
Mark Emmert, the head of the NCAA, makes millions. Coaches today are making millions. Who's not making anything? I don't want to hear about they get scholarships. Yeah, they get scholarships all right, they earn those scholarships.
I think the biggest thing to do - especially if you're a woman trying to succeed in a male-dominated industry - is to just study as much you can and get ready for negativity, backlash, and comments. There's going to be a ton of it.
It's such a beautiful sport, with no politics involved, no color, no class. Only as a youngster can you play and as a pro can you win. The game has kept me young, involved and excited and for me to be up here with gems of baseball.
TV critics came after me for overhyping LeBron. A lot of people don't know this, but I didn't want to do the game. I told ESPN, 'We're making this kid into something special.' I always follow orders, whatever my people want me to do.
Most of the time, if someone gives me trouble at a bar or something, saying, 'Why do you hate the Red Sox or Patriots?' they end up buying you a drink or whatever. They like to be heard, say their piece, and then talk about the team.
It's funny, but when there are dominant teams, there are a number of people who rail about the fact that they're always seeing the Dallas Cowboys or the San Francisco 49ers or the Green Bay either in the playoffs or in the Super Bowl.
I'm my dad's kid, and I'm still, right or wrong, fighting that uphill battle, and I'm not saying that makes sense. I mean my dad didn't hire me at Fox... but it certainly gave me my start, and I think I'm always kind of fighting that.
Nobody's tuning in - let's check the TV Guide listings and see what game Joe Buck is calling. Nobody cares. They want to see the Cubs. They want to see the Packers. They want to see the Cowboys. They don't care who's calling the game.
People know Troy Aikman as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. That carries tremendous weight. Because he really guards against overexposure, or just saying stuff for effect. When he really says something that's critical, people notice.
I've always felt that the game itself is pretty much a melody and I am there to provide the lyrics. You want the lyrics to match the melody, because if you are composing a song or recording a song, it's cacophonous if they don't match.
I thought it was terrible. I don't know who to believe. Williams was very loyal and honest. Nobody could ever say different. Sometimes, that got him into a lot of trouble. But after he died and they cut his head off, that made me sick.
You either go through your life working for someone and getting a paycheck - and it can be a damn good paycheck, and I am not complaining as someone who has always been a salaried employee - or you can go out and become an entrepreneur.
We want the game to be attractive to a new audience, but you have to be careful because there are certain traditions this game upholds. Silence over the swing, that's always been there. That's not understood by those who don't play golf.
Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, are the two toughest communities in which you have to put together a winning football team. They are both big metropolitan areas without professional football and major league baseball to sidetrack them.
I started in radio. I enjoy the mental gymnastics that go along with matching voice to picture and vice versa and trying to accent the action as opposed to provide all of the action through my words. And that's really what play-by-play is.
Just as many golfers feel a kinship with Ben Hogan or Bobby Jones after studying their lives, such is the closeness I feel with Lawson Little Jr. Little quite simply is the most underappreciated golfer of the first half of the 20th century.
My perfect day is to wake up with all kinds of energy and enthusiasm for the day, have a list of what I want to achieve, and at the end of the day look in the mirror and think man, this has been perfect. Everything I planned became a reality.
Whether it's a steroid conversation, or a player who gets into trouble, whatever it may be. Because of that, it makes you wonder what you can do if you had a little more space. That's the fun of the show for me - I have an hour worth of space.
For almost 20 years, I've reported on some amazing feats of athleticism for ESPN. But the one thing that stood out, game after game, is that it takes a team to win. When I got cancer, that lesson got personal. And Team Livestrong became my team.
I think there was a sense that the impact was being lost because the audience was so familiar with the form. You combine that with people's attention spans, which are clearly conditioned to be shorter now, and there's a need to vary the paradigm.
As a teenager, Tiger was self-assured and mature, yet also warm and charming. But the warm outward veneer gradually changed. When he pulled off his 'win for the ages' at the 1997 Masters, he already was sharing less of his softer, emotional side.
I knew I heard the doctor correctly. I didn't think he said something else, I didn't think for a second, 'Well maybe he didn't say it.' No, I knew I heard him! But I still couldn't comprehend... in my mind... in my soul... he just said, 'cancer.'
In 2014, when my wife, Courtney, was expecting our daughter and we were contemplating a name, I said, 'How about Finley?' Only after Courtney said that she loved the name did I reveal that it was inspired by an aspect of Samuel Finley Brown Morse.
My dad used to get to the nastiest letters. But somebody had to take the time to type it, stamp it, send it to him, send it to the radio station. And I mean nasty stuff. It's not like nasty people with nasty opinions just popped up out of nowhere.
I don't feel any different than I did when I was 40. But I realize mathematically, I'm equidistant between that and 80. I'll keep doing this for a while, but I'm not going to be one of these people who hang on just for the sake of being on the air.
I certainly don't feel like I have a monopoly on [opinions] because I have the job at FOX - any one of a thousand people could have the job. There are people out there that have just as educated an opinion on what I'm calling or describing as I do.
When I tell people that I get interviewed five or six times more than I will interview players or coaches leading up to the game that comes as a surprise. That's part of it and it just goes with being part of a Super Bowl broadcast team. I enjoy it.
I don't look at the world through a prism of sarcasm. Anything I do, I take things face on. I tell you how I feel, and what you hear on the air is what I'm feeling. I'm not going to try to fake it, create synthetic drama. I'm just going to be myself.
Glue guys aren't superstars. They're not the No. 1 option. They just do things only coaches really appreciate. The stars get the headlines, but glue guys help you get in the winner's circle. I don't think you can win without having that kind of player.
I don't watch teams other than Dodgers on TV and I watch the Dodgers games sparingly. I like to refresh my mind at night, so I like to read. For me, watching baseball at night, it would be like an insurance man reading actuary tables. I like to escape.
It's what you'd expect out of Baton Rouge: people tailgating with shrimp étouffée, everything from alligators roasting on a barbecue to dishes that you would get in the French Quarter. These people are serious and they are legit and they're ready to go.
I've got corporate executives, my bosses... this is true... who will text message me... and say, 'Hey a, heard you had chemotherapy today, want me to stop by and pick you up something to eat and bring it to you?' Whose boss does that? My bosses do that.
I used to write letters to Jim McKay in college. 'Wide World of Sports' was this travelogue, really, that introduced us to sports and it introduced us to parts of the world that we had never seen before. And no one was a bigger tour guide than Mr. McKay.
I'm out there to be real, and I think people respond to that. If you have some image that you're protecting, eventually people get sick of it, and I can't imagine living that way for an entire lifetime. I'd rather just be who I am, and that's good enough.
An All-American is an ordinary person with an extraordinary desire to excel. You don't get to the top of the mountain by just dreaming. It's nice to dream. But it's the work ethic and pride that makes you get to that mountain top and that level of success.
Monday Night Football started in 1970, and when it started, it was something extremely special because sports had not been aired in prime time. So, it was a novelty, and a lot of people thought it wouldn't work, and, of course, it worked spectacularly well.
The point that I would make is it's easy for somebody like me to be critical of Colin Kaepernick, but I haven't suffered some of the same issues that Colin Kaepernick has. On some level, it's like, how dare I weigh in on what Kaepernick is doing or feeling?