sports

And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn't forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of life begins afresh. The truly remarkable among us visit these highs periodically; winning then becomes a journey, a graph where each point is crucial but is in reality merely part of a larger curve.

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.

At least watching dirty movies can be kind of fascinating if they aren't too horribly strange. And even the horribly strange ones are still more interesting than televised sports.

If we had played Poly a hundred more times that year we wouldn't have beaten them again. On that night we found a way. It was an unbelievable thing. It was a marvelous, miraculous win." -Coach Frank Allocco

Where is it written in the Constitution that because a guy played football, he has the automatic right to sit in that booth? How hard is football? If I've spent thirty-five years as a sportswriter, you think I don't know you get six for a touchdown? You think I don't know that? You think I don't know you get three for a field goal? C'mon, c'mon. And I can actually speak English okay, so that would be a difference between me and a guy who spent his whole life playing football. Now, not all of them are like that, but it's that thinking that says, "We have divine right of booth." No, you don't. No you don't.

I have no sense of humor about losing

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

Like many men addicted to sports, Clive Sr. was also a religious man.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.

There's something about sports. You can be setting fire to cats and burying them in your backyard, but as long as you're playing team sports, people think you're okay.

I wish people had as much enthusiasm about unfucking the planet as they did about sports. Who wins on Sunday is pretty goddamned trivial compared to just about anything else.

We made a successful, last-minute effort to get the French Open many years ago, when the USA network bailed on it. I remember, four of us jumped on a plane on the spur of the moment to cover it. I think we had someone draw up a sign (by hand) that we could hold up in front of the camera to tell viewers that it was ESPN coverage.

The idea here is simple, if you can dream it, it is possible.

It is naive to think that sport is above politics, that any kind of level playing field exists, or that sport allows the world to put its problems on hold.

Defeated misery is what all sport is about, eventually, if you follow the story for long enough; all sportsmen know this.

Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on.

I'm not doing it for media attention, not doing it for sponsors, not for money.