I thought I had the potential to be a better fighter than I'd ever be a football player. Besides, it was something my father always wanted me to do. He told me since I was a little kid I was a born fighter.

When you think of Peyton Manning, you think 'ambassador.' The game has grown exponentially during his career because of him and what he means to our game, not only as a football player but as a humanitarian.

I just love sports: basketball, baseball, football. As a kid I did it all. But in my heart, I'm a football player. There's nothing like it. It's what I live for. Ever since I could walk, I've been drawn to it.

This is the world you live in when you're a football player, an athlete. You want someone to discipline you. You want to have consistency. You want a guy that puts you in position so that you can have success.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

I'm OK with having a really good football player with a chip on his shoulder because he's going to come to prove to not only the people that didn't draft him, but himself, that I'm a pretty good football player.

I've always gone through adversity in this game, and I've always overcome it. My middle school coach told me that I was probably a better hockey player than a football player, and that still drives me every day.

I don't have no issue with any guy. I'm a football player. I'm a competitor. When we're in the field, we're going to compete and be competitive. It's not personal between none of these guys. It's all in the game.

My dad was a football player, and I've been the same size since eighth grade, so I get how it can be hard when you don't fit in with the 'normal-size' girls, or your butt and legs are too big for normal-size jeans.

People are moving to Florida all the time, lots of times because the economy got tough in the North and they moved south to find jobs. Everybody who comes has two kids - and one of them is usually a football player.

You can learn from your mistakes but you can't harp on the bad things, the negative things that have happened. But you definitely have to learn from them and get better and improve and progress as a football player.

It ticks me off to hear people say, 'Hey man, at your age you don't look like you're slowing down a bit.' Like, can I just be a football player? Why does the 33 age have to coincide with me when you talking football?

I think it was everything about him: his work ethic, his desire to be the best football player that he can be. He just woke up and he was just Ray Lewis, so he did pretty much everything great. He was a great teammate.

I'm quite a shy person, but I know I'm a good football player. That's just the way I am. That's the way I grew up. My grandmother brought me up, and she is the same way. She's understated, but she knows what she's worth.

I really actually started when I was 10 years old, but before that, I loved to play with Father because he played as an ex-player. I just enjoyed it, so I started at 10 years old with Father to be a proper football player.

The way I operate as a football player and the product that I put on the field in relation to the business that I conduct, I want it to be as tough as possible in practice so when I get into the games I've been there before.

Over the years I've learnt to live with two persons in my heart. One is Edson, who has fun with his friends and family; the other is the football player Pele. I didn't want the name. 'Pele' sounds like baby-talk in Portuguese.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

I just read 'The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.' To be married 25 years, you have to put as much energy as I put into being an actor or being a great football player into being a better husband and a better father.

You're seen a certain way in the acting world. To them, you're still a football player and not taken as seriously. They think you're just doing it to be a celebrity, to keep your name out there. They don't think you'll prepare.

I'm just going to continue focusing on becoming a better football player, attacking the offseason with the mindset of getting stronger and doing everything that I can to show that when the time comes, I'm ready to play football.

On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner's office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player.

I always told myself I was more than a football player, so every off season, I pushed myself to go outside the box and get a little bit better off the field. I dabbled in many business adventures to gain more real world experience.

If I stayed a football player, my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is, my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports, but I found I could have a more profound impact on people.

I'm proud of the fact that besides being known as a successful former football player, I've also worked hard to establish myself as a successful businessman, network broadcaster, sports & entertainment executive and philanthropist.

I was a not-big-enough, not-fast-enough football player who wanted a little bit of an edge on the field. I figured my own sweat, if I could get that off my body, and more importantly, the weight that stood behind it, that would help.

If you want to become a professional football player at any level, when you're growing up, you have to make sacrifices, and it's very difficult. It's not easy, but you have to train hard, you have to live right, and you have to rest.

There was a long stint during my childhood after I gave up on being a pro football player - we're talking sixth grade here - that I strongly considered a future writing and drawing comic books. I have been making stuff up ever since.

A football player is often bigger than a basketball player - more massive, that is. The basketball player is taller and more slender. So it is with redwoods. The tallest redwoods are often slender, and so they aren't the largest ones.

My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.

I think if you want to become a great football player, professional, you must give all the time one hundred percent, you must work hard - to be lucky is a good thing - but if you work hard and you give everything you will have great success.

Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don't know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I've always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.

I always wanted to become a good role model for kids as a professional football player. Unfortunately, I didn't attain that through football, but I was smart enough to realize that professional wrestling provided another opportunity for that.

I think if I were a college professor, no one would say I was uncomfortable about being shy because that might be expected. But I think because of people's stereotypes, they think of a football player as someone who is very outgoing and I'm not.

Dealing with bullies when I was in sixth and seventh grade has made me a better football player, believe it or not. You have to come to a point when you're like, 'I've had enough, and I'm not going to be kicked around and pushed around anymore.'

When God built Pele, he put everything that a player needs in him. He knew how to shoot, how to dribble, how to head, be physical. He had everything that a football player needs to have. It's difficult for someone to achieve what he has in football.

I was born in Dortmund and grew up here, so you become automatically a black and yellow. I played here for many years in the youth ranks, but at first I did not have the chance to become a professional football player at BVB and to realize my dream.

Some of the money going to the rookies can now be spent on people who have proved their worth. After all, the average playing life of a pro football player is about eight years and it is only fitting that the veterans get something for their efforts.

I wanted to be a professional athlete. Young men and women from Montana don't make it to the professional level that often. And I always believed that because I was a great football player that made me better than you. And that's not the case at all.

Now that we're seeing that you can be a really masculine football player and a homosexual, you can be a really girly boy who likes to dress in women's clothes, I think that it's just been adding to the whole discussion about homosexuality and society.

If we want the best pitcher, let's get Bobby Feller. If want the best football player, let's get Jimmy Brown; the best basketball player, let's get Bill Russell. If we want the guy who can do the best job for the United States - let's get Donald Trump.

Honestly, like, American football is not that big over in the U.K., so we hadn't really heard of Drew Brees before. I did know that he was, like, a massive football player. He's a massive star, so I was still a little bit anxious and nervous to meet him.

Stan Hansen was a tough-as-nails freshman middle linebacker when I was a senior at West Texas State. He was a damn good football player, but he developed some problems with his knees. When football didn't work out he asked me about professional wrestling.

Dennis is something special. We are talking a lot about exciting football, and Dennis Bergkamp, I think, started with attractive football a long time ago. He was one of these players. A lot of the things he did as a football player you can compare to art.

As a football player, you just deal with injuries. It's all part of the football game. I've dealt with injuries as much as everybody else. People have dealt with worse injuries than I've dealt with. It's all part of the game, all part of getting that tackle.

I have always been an outstanding football player, I have always had uncanny abilities, great arm strength, an immense ability to play the game from a quarterback standpoint. The problem was that I wasn't given the liberty to do certain things when I was young.

It's none of our business, the sexual preference of people. So, I hope if someone's thinking about it, that if they do come out as gay and are a professional football player, and it makes them happy, and it makes their life easier, then I think they should do it.

One of the best things if you are a football player is to see the faces of the kids, when they see you and are dreaming of being like you one day. That's a big responsibility, to be a good image for those kids. A football player is more than just a football player.

I've always thought about my legacy - more so, though, my impact off the field and how I'm helping my community and solidifying and strengthening the lives of others around me. And also, I just want to be a dominant football player, too. So it encompasses everything.

It's a competitive business, and everybody wants to be the best. And when there's a new guy coming in, and there's buzz about him, 'Oh, he was a pro football player,' you instantly have people that don't like you because they're afraid you're going to take their spot.

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