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At the end of the day, it's not where you get drafted. It's not going to set you in stone with how good you're going to be in your NFL career. Obviously, it's being surrounded by the right people, the right coaches, how you present yourself, how you work hard.
Dez Bryant isn't Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees or Russell Wilson. Dez Bryant is a typical, me-first NFL receiver diva, cut from the same cloth as Terrell Owens, Chad Johnson, Randy Moss and Keyshawn Johnson, sprinkled with a heavy dash of Pacman Jones.
Too many times I see kids come up to me, especially at the high school age, and say, 'Man, it would be cool to play in the NFL just because of the money.' And I'm like, 'Oh my goodness, you are missing everything, because money is not going to make you happy.'
Football is an absolutely idiotic pastime by any rational standards. You're running into other people as hard as you can, you get frequent muscle strains and ligament tears, and the protective padding really doesn't do all that much to absorb the blunt trauma.
The NFL was something I never really dreamed about, but when you get to this level, you realize how special this is. This league is about winning. It's a very competitive league. Sometimes you don't win as much as someone else thinks you should, and you're out.
I'm very excited for the opportunity to work with Skip Bayless, the top opinionist in the business, and Shannon Sharpe, legendary NFL tight end and Hall of Famer. I love a good debate and look forward to sitting with these two and seeing what happens every day.
I think they shouldn't allow cut blocks, because our knees are important to us, too. I know concussions are a big deal, too, but I think knee, cut blocks are a big deal, but that seems to be OK with the NFL. So they're not too concerned about safety, obviously.
To this day, I still haven't touched one dime of my signing bonus or NFL contract money. I live off my marketing money and haven't blown it on any big-money expensive cars, expensive jewelry, or tattoos and still wear my favorite pair of jeans from high school.
When Paul Heyman came and gave me the whole idea for the character, 'The Franchise,' I remember the NFL was just starting to classify one of their players as the franchise player. So that was the whole idea, that 'The Franchise' was the franchise player for ECW.
I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn't seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.
I told some people before, that if five years from now, or 10 years, if I am still playing in the NFL, this whole kind of story just fits who I am. It just shows that with hard work and confidence in yourself and belief in yourself, you can accomplish your dreams.
Truthfully, this is how I approach my workout: I want to be the best athlete I can possibly be. If I can out-perform some of the better athletes then I'm happy. When I look at the NFL or the NBA, these guys look how I want to look - it's useable, functional muscle.
I scored a touchdown on the first reception I made in the NFL and spiked the ball. The instant I did, I felt horrible and couldn't wait for the game to end so I could call Coach Bryant and apologize. He said he didn't even notice, but I never spiked the ball again.
If you're in the NFL for more than five minutes you see that you can be here today and gone tomorrow. That's why I played the way I did. I think that's why I worked hard to not miss a game, fight through injuries and all that stuff because when it's gone, it's gone.
Biggest lesson I learned my first year in the NFL is no one gives a crap about what you did last week. This league is about what have you done for me now. That's the NFL. It's also our culture. So you keep working hard because that's the biggest truth about football.
The bottom line is that it's the NFL, and there's going to be competition wherever you go. That's the way I look at it. I've had competition in high school. I've had competition in college, and that's part of the game. That's part of how you improve as a quarterback.
There are a very few consistent, common threads among the most successful NFL quarterbacks. Most of them are intangibles, which you can't measure with a physical test. You need leadership ability, competitiveness, drive, and will. You need focus, poise, and charisma.
I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans. I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time.
We just have fun with our NFL Draft coverage because we understand that it's a long process, and there can be technical glitches that we don't profess to ignore. During our late coverage of the Draft, we sometimes get slap-happy and distort the heads of our analysts.
Pro Day was very important for me because that was really the only time that I had to prove that I could play at an NFL level and that was really through the physical drills they put me through which was running and throwing the ball. It turned out pretty well for me.
That's the difference between the NCAA and the NFL right now. They've got to step up and say, 'We're going to do the right thing. We're going to hire qualified people. We're going to hire the best man for the job regardless of what boosters or anyone else has to say.'
You know, I started this process of being a football player and I'm going to make it to the NFL very soon and I plan on finishing that. And by 'finishing that,' I mean that I'm going to go out and be the best that I can be and put everything forth to make that happen.
As much as I enjoy TV, I've always loved radio. And I love doing the NFL games, the Monday night games, on radio. Because you are the game. I really enjoyed calling basketball and hockey on the radio, but the presentation is more specific - you're talking all the time.
You have to watch out because being an athlete and playing at the college level with the opportunity to go the NFL, you're under the microscope and everybody's watching. There are people that look up to us. So you have to watch out for what you do and who you're around.
It's so hard in the NFL, man. You spend the course of a long week preparing for one opportunity. And once you get that opportunity and you get in that moment, it's just an amazing feeling. It's something you should celebrate about, something you should be excited about.
Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of being paid like NBA, NFL and soccer and baseball athletes. They have that cushion where they can kind of hang out. Even the guys on the bench. But for us, we don't fight, we don't get paid and that's the scary reality to it all.
For one, when has Jay-Z ever taken a knee to come out and tell us that we're past kneeling? Yes, he's done a lot of great work, a lot of great social justice work. But for you to get paid to go into an NFL press conference and say that we're past kneeling? Again, asinine.
You look at guys with significant Alzheimer's and dementia and the mood swings and the suicides that unfortunately NFL players have been faced with. And depression. Lou Gehrig's disease. These are all things that have kind of been linked to the brain damage from football.
A significant piece of the wealth that the NFL owners garner is a result of the enormous TV revenues they get - and those revenues are supported by a legislatively granted exemption from the antitrust laws that has been made applicable to sports leagues, primarily the NFL.
At the end of the day, it's hard to win against the NFL. It's a billion-dollar business, it's hard to win against it. They can manipulate a lot of different things. They can pull strings, they know people. At the end of the day, nine times out of 10, they are going to win.
When the Pledge of Allegiance, the songs of this country, anything is played - we should be standing up. Hand over our hearts. Saluting, if you're in the military... That's the way I feel about it. And, that's what I think everybody should do including all the NFL players.
You do not have to be convicted or even charged of a crime to be able to demonstrate that you've violated a personal conduct policy, and reflect poorly not only on themselves, but all of their teammates, every NFL player in the league, and everyone associated with the NFL.
About a minute-and-a-half to go. He goes on a down-and-in pass. As soon as he caught it, I really puffed him, and his head snapped and the ball flew, and Chuck Weber fell on it. I clenched my fist, I turned around, and I closed my eyes and I said, 'This f-in game is over.'
We watch so much film, calling up pitch by pitch, count by count in order to spot tendencies. Technology is a big part of how I get ready for a game. What's funny is a lot of the NFL guys say they study the 'Madden' game; that's how they learn to read offenses and defenses.
I know the college rule is if they push you out of bounds, you can come back in and catch the ball, but I think the NFL rule is it doesn't matter how you get out of bounds, you can't be the first one to touch the ball. That's what I think it is, I'm not really sure on that.
I had an expectation going into the NFL, and then the experience that I had exceeded what I expected to see from people that played at that level. And so, it was a learning experience not only from a mental standpoint and a physical standpoint, but just a routine standpoint.
The draft is one of my favorite events because it is about football. People are focused on how their teams improve. It's a celebration of football. And most importantly, it represents a very important time in the lives of these men who are entering the NFL, and their families.
The way we score is complicated. The rules are strict. The goal on the court is to show nothing, and then when you show something you are a bad person. Getting angry is not allowed. The show that you see on TV is not exciting, like the NFL or NBA, because you are seeing robots.
That's the biggest difference from college to NFL. Everybody's so talented at this level, the difference is knowing the game - knowing where to go with the ball in my position, knowing how to execute your job to the highest level. In college, you could just get by playing ball.
When you go to watch a baseball game, when you go to watch an NBA game, when you watch an NFL game, when you go to watch movies, the offering that those arenas are doing foodwise is 'all the hot dogs you can eat'; all the French fries you can eat; for $20 you can eat 20 hot dogs.
When someone tells me they've never been to a race, I tell them that the first one they should go to is Bristol, Tennesee. The shape of the track, the energy, and excitement under the lights is similar to what you might get at a stick-and-ball game in college football or the NFL.
My first two years in the CFL, all I thought of was getting back to the NFL - it was like 'I'll put my time in up here and go back.' Then I went and signed a nice contract in Calgary and was like, 'Hey, I can make a living up here, this is great football, and I'm having a blast.'
Remember that the NFL was cultivated into prominence by Pete Rozelle, a pro-war conservative. In the 1960s, Rozelle hired a World War II veteran-turned-filmmaker, Ed Sabol, to produce highlights, commercials and documentaries that marketed the sport as patriotic and militaristic.
I don't want to wake up and be bored. That's probably my greatest fear is to have nothing to do. What better job is there than to play quarterback for an NFL team, and certainly one that I've been on for a long time and had success with? I don't plan on giving it up any time soon.
Sure, when you think 'World of Warcraft,' you might picture the nerdier set - those who may have sacrificed hygiene and sleep to reach one more experience level. But the truth is that 'WoW' is populated with players of all sorts of backgrounds, from rural housewives to NFL punters.
It's not normal when you finish playing collegiate ball to be able to jump right into the NFL and work for Jon Gruden. That doesn't happen if you don't have your grandfather that has the connections and has earned the respect around this league. And for that, I feel very fortunate.
I have done a lot of NFL games, a season-opening home games, playoff games, championship games, and of course Stanley Cup games, World Series, NBA championship games. But I have never done a Superbowl. It's probably the only major sporting event I've never done and I would like to.
For me, I think that, certainly, the fact that Las Vegas has a gambling aspect to it is far overshadowed by the entertainment value, if you will, family appeal, that you have, the convention appeal. So it does not have disfavor with me, in my opinion, relative to being an NFL city.
When I broadcast my first NFL game during the 1989 season, I had absolutely no idea what to study or how to study. NBC provided me with a handful of newspaper articles, we watched some film at the team facility on Friday before the game, and we interviewed some players and coaches.
Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.