Quotes & Sayings About American Football

People are interested in pro football because it provides them with an emotional oasis; they don't want football to get involved in the same types of court cases, racial problems and legislative issues they encounter in the rest of American life. — Pete Rozelle

At the high school level, the coaches get these kids in revenue-driven sports and take them away from baseball. There's so much pressure on these kids to even play spring football. We need to get the African-American players back in the game, which I think would make it not only a better game, but more exciting and entertaining for everyone. — Pat Gillick

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond. — Jim Jarmusch

This is the culmination of a lot of people's vision. I think this is just another step towards making Central Michigan football among the elite programs in the Mid-American Conference. — Kevin Kelly

The only thing Native Americans ever did better than the rest of us is spirituality. Of course, that's everything, isn't it? — Deacon Jones

College football today is one of the last great strongholds of genuine old-fashioned American hypocrisy. — Noel Gallagher

I think it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world anymore, and that some former European imperial powers can no longer impress their will on to others in far away places, and we must accept that football has moved away from being a European and South American sport: it has become the World Sport that billions of fans are excitedly following every week, everywhere in the world. — Sepp Blatter

There are many reasons why I hate college football. The 4-hour games drone on longer than Steve Lyons during the American League playoffs. The ever-expanding season threatens to creep into early July. Boise, Idaho, hosts a bowl game. And it's played on blue artificial turf. — Stephen Rodrick

I'm Canadian. The only difference between dating American and Canadian guys is whether you'll be watching football or hockey. I have no preference. — Serinda Swan

Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis. — Michael Leunig

Finally, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as Thanksgiving: a day to solemnly acknowledge the sacrifices made for the Union ... Shopping was part of the American Dream, too. So in 1939, at the urging of merchants, FDR moved Thanksgiving ahead a week, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. And there it has remained, a day of national gluttony, retail pageantry, TV football, and remembrance of the Pilgrims, a folk so austere that they regarded Christmas as a corrupt Papist holiday. — Tony Horwitz

Baseball is the greatest of American games. Some say football, but it is my firm belief, and it shall always be, that baseball has no superior. — Thomas A. Edison

I was born with God-given gifts of very talented musical ability and exceptoinal physical coordination. I always needed prodding to practice piano, violin, cornet or French horn. I had to be pulled away from any athletic participation. Now, at 63, I look back on my athletic feats - All-American, All-Pro Quaterback, College and Pro Football Hall of Fame - and I can honestly say I would trade these all if I had been smart enough to pursue my musical career. YOUNG PEOPLE - don't make the same mistake. — Otto Graham

The Frankfurt Galaxy( The NFL Europe team) always had tremendous success, at that time there were 2,000 American football clubs in Europe playing the game from juniors through to adults. — Bill Peterson

You can go super American and get barbecue and beer and be like, 'Whatever, I'm watching a football game.' That's exactly what I'm going to do. — Emily Ratajkowski

I played English football - soccer - instead of American football, because we couldn't afford the equipment. — Wally Schirra

Baseball, football, basketball - these quintessentially American pastimes are recognizably sports because they involve play: they are games. One plays football, one doesn't play boxing ... The boxing match is the very image, the more terrifying for being so stylized, of mankind's collective aggression; its ongoing historical madness. — Joyce Carol Oates

I was a halfback on an American football team in Athens, Greece - the Kississia Colts - where I went to high school, and we took the Cup my senior year. The downside, and somewhat unfortunate piece of information I have to pass on, is there were only two teams in the league because of the limited amount of Americans. — Greg Kinnear

American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East. — David Mamet

It was weird - writing is a stupid thing to do. I come up here in the morning to a pleasant room in the roof of my house and imagine I'm a black South American football superstar; then I have to imagine I'm a female pop celebrity who's pregnant. It's a completely mad way to spend your time. — Mal Peet

And of course in America you've got American football and baseball and all those other ball games, soccer has become a little niche that the women have kind of filled. — Parminder Nagra

You have to remember that baseball really was the American pastime in the Forties, not football, basketball or any other sport. — Harrison Ford

What cooler way to grow up for an American boy than to be around cars and football? — William Clay Ford Jr.

There are so many things about playing football that seem to me uniquely American. Anybody can succeed, anybody can play, but you've got to work hard to do it. — Dean Cain

Who but the sports-mad [Norman] Mailer would liken the battle between God and the Devil to a game of American football? The contest, for sure, has with [sic] own laws (so that after God and the Devil 'tackle a guy, they don't kick him in the head'), but each side is not above cheating - with God breaking the rules occasionally by throwing in 'a miracle'. Strangely, Mailer doesn't mention Jesus in this agonising analogy, but then the notion of the 'super-sub' may be an image too far even for him. — Christopher Hitchens

I love baseball. And American Football, too. But not rugby. — Carlos Slim

My father was an all-American football player. — Edwin Moses

I'm a friend in the context that we helped fight a battle together for survival of the American Football League. But I don't consider myself close to Al in recent years. You just don't continually sue your business partners like he has. — Lamar Hunt

He's an American, qualified to play for Wales because he has a Welsh grandmother, who was on the bench against Switzerland. — Guy Mowbray

I'm a light eater. As soon as it's light, I start to eat. — Art Donovan

[upon hearing that the school received funding for the football field, but not for any of the arts] Well, we might never have another Great American Novel or amazing musicals written by Americans, but at least we will always be able to toss a ball between some metal posts. Our priorities are right on track. — Chris O'Guinn

When I did TV shows and movies, the studios did demographic research. They were shocked to find that my audience isn't just men who are too drunk to turn off the TV after football. It's women, too. I don't know exactly why, other than that I've tried to remain true to myself for all these years. I have gone through a lot, and I've been open about it. Maybe they look at me and can see how you can grow up, have children, continue to be sexy, get married and divorced and, though you grew up poor, live the American dream. I'm very blessed. I'm happy for it all. — Pamela Anderson

I don't like to lose, and that isn't so much because it is just a football game, but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective. I don't want a football player who doesn't take defeat to heart, who laughs it off with the thought, "Oh, well, there's another Saturday." The trouble in American life today, in business as well as in sports, is that too many people are afraid of competition. The result is that in some circles people have come to sneer at success if it costs hard work and training and sacrifice. — Knute Rockne

Baseball and American football and hockey are all ahead because they have a history. The MLS is kind of new. So hopefully, in time, and with players coming and trying to develop the game, and the U.S. team also doing well - at the last World Cup, they finished above England and created some buzz. — Thierry Henry

One thing I don't understand is that average American movie-goers cannot watch a movie for three hours, yet they'll watch a stupid, boring, horrific football game for four hours. Now, that is boredom at its most colossal. — Quentin Tarantino

It didn't matter whether "football" for you was soccer or the American sport played by men in helmets. — Neal Stephenson

The number of fighters that are ISIS fighters wouldn't fill up most American football stadiums. This is not a large group of individuals, but they're tenacious, and they rule with absolute terror. — James Lankford

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. — Zayn Malik

Fantasy football is actually an amazing American pastime, because it takes the ultimate team sport, NFL and football, and turns it into the quest for individual achievement. — Jeff Schaffer

I grew up playing football since the day I could walk; some of my greatest memories of childhood are playing touch football in all kinds of weather with my best friends. That's a part of the American experience that no corporation can destroy. — Greg Graffin

Ronan was - if the papers were to be believed - the best hooker to come out of Ireland maybe ever. And by "hooker," I don't mean prostitute. Hooker is a position - a very pivotal position - on the rugby field. Based on my quick research, it appeared to be the rugby equivalent of an American football team's quarterback. — L. H. Cosway

One single great player doesn't make anything for a team; it has to be a team. I think [American] football is the greatest team sport there is because you have to depend on your brother next to you. — Tim Tebow

I keep to a minimum dialect, in-jokes about football (soccer) teams and soap opera characters, so as not to lose North American readers. — Peter Robinson

Happiness does not come from football awards. It's terrible to correlate happiness with football. Happiness comes from a good job, being able to feed your wife and kids. I don't dream football, I dream the American dream - two cars in a garage, be a happy father. — Barry Sanders

I don't understand American football at all. It looks like all-in wrestling with crash helmets. — Sting

Soccer's appeal lay in its opposition to the other popular sports. For children of the sixties, there was something abhorrent about enrolling kids in American football, a game where violence wasn't just incidental but inherent. They didn't want to teach the acceptability of violence, let alone subject their precious children to the risk of physical maiming. Baseball, where each batter must stand center stage four or five times a game, entailed too many stressful, potentially ego-deflating encounters. Basketball, before Larry Bird's prime, still had the taint of the ghetto.
But soccer represented something very different. It was a tabula rasa, a sport onto which a generation of parents could project their values. Quickly, soccer came to represent the fundamental tenets of yuppie parenting, the spirit of Sesame Street and Dr. Benjamin Spock. — Franklin Foer

While American football is very structured and linear and static - where everyone lines up, and there's a burst, and it happens - soccer is like the cosmos. It's like constellations. It's bodies moving in space. It's a very spherical game. — Gabriel Luna

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism. — Frank Deford

Rugby is a different game. There is an interruption every two minutes also in American football. Our soccer is a moving game: play, play, play, move, move - you don't interrupt. — Franz Beckenbauer

Anybody who knows me knows I'm passionate about American football. I gave this game everything I had. In college, that's what I looked to do. Everything. Everything for so long, and all you hear growing up is that hard work pays off, hard work pays off, hard work pays off. — La'el Collins

Are we really celebrating the troops, or are we exploiting them? Using them to make football and the NFL seem as patriotic, as all-American as the troops who actually fight and die for us? — Johnny Anonymous

Italy doesn't need American football. For what? I've been. Wine, women, song, shopping, unbelievable vistas and landscapes ... Do they need Titans vs. Panthers? Uh, no. — Michael Wilbon

One of these days, someone smarter and younger and more articulate than I is going to get through to the American people just how really messed up the federal government has become. And when that happens, the American people are going to rise up like that football crowd in Cleveland and run both teams off the field. — Zell Miller

At pier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht with two of the three hundred and twenty-four Esthonians who are sailing around in different parts of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long and sending back articles to the Esthonian newspapers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia and bring their authors between a dollar and a dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the place occupied by the baseball or football news in American newspapers and are run under the heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sunburned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will sail to another yacht basin and write another saga. They are very happy too. Almost as happy as the people on the Alzira III. It's great to be an Intrepid Voyager. — Ernest Hemingway,

I grew up in Europe, and soccer was the first organized game I played. When we moved back to the U.S. in the middle of 4th grade, I switched to American football and stopped playing competitively until college, when I played intramurals. — Andrew Luck

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players. — Abby Wambach

I play American football every Saturday, which I find calming. — Chad Harbach

And the reason you play American Football, Hiruma-san?"
"Because it's fun."
(Translated) — Riichiro Inagaki

American football makes rugby look like a Tupperware party. — Sue Lawley

I've been playing American football since I was six years old. I was a captain of my high school team, playing strong safety. — Gabriel Luna

As she reached for the plates, she wondered if her life could get any weirder. Her life savings had been handed over to a band of South American guerrillas, she had a phony engagement to a famous football player, she was homeless and jobless, and she was making breakfast for Mad Jack Patriot. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The game is just, everybody talks about baseball, but I really think football probably has a little bit more American feeling than anything. — Joe Montana

Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings. — George F. Will

I liked to play against all the teams in the National Football League or the American Football League, because they were always a challenge. — Jim Otto

If the government is to try and ban private consumption of alcohol and tobacco, it must surely ban such activities as hang-gliding, skiing, rock-climbing and so on. Where should it stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey?
Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives. — Milton Friedman

I'm a huge Rugby Union fan, which is a bit like American football - but tougher. — Alexander Hanson

In the late-'80s, there was a big push to make American football big in Scotland. The Super Bowl was on TV, but it didn't really catch on. When I was a kid, though, I became a big Miami Dolphins fan. I don't really know why - I just liked the logo, I guess. I didn't really know what was going on. — Kevin McKidd

I've seen the growth of this game in this country, the stadiums that were built, the great European players that have come and the great American players who've been created. Americans want to be number one at everything. And they are at baseball, football, basketball. Soccer is growing fast, and I want to be a part of that. — David Beckham

American sports are quite masculine. And football - although it's still played by men all over the world - football compared to American football is quite feminine in its artistry. And there's no padding. It's America's loss, though. — Noel Gallagher

Football is American; why are the Romans numering our bowls?! — Stephen Colbert

It's not that the Davenports had never had black people around their house before, or even a Chinese guy once, but never a Malaysian who looked Chinese to some and Indian to others, fancied himself black at times, and wanted to be the next Lenny Bruce Lee; a preppy black football player who sounded like the president and read Plato in Latin; and a white woman who occasionally claimed to be Native American. They were like an overconstructed novel, each representative of some cul-de-sac of idiolect and stereotype, missing only a handicapped person - No! At Berkeley we say handi-capable person - and a Jew and a Hispanic, and an Asian not of the subcontinent, Louis always said. — T. Geronimo Johnson

I am a National Football League player of American Samoan heritage. Because of my status as a professional athlete, I have been blessed to play a role in educating players and fans about the culture and history of America's southernmost territory. — Troy Polamalu

I'm an ardent American Football fan. — Don King

[American football] fanbase resemble that of contemporary boxing: rich people watching poor people play a game they would never play themselves. — Chuck Klosterman

None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.
Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. — Neil Gaiman

Football and gambling - two great American addictions working together. What could possibly go wrong? — Froma Harrop