Athlete Legacy Quotes

Obviously, in a sport like golf, we see Tiger Woods fall off. There's not really too much damage he can take from that, although when you watch him and he sucks, and you're like, 'God, you used to be so good but you suck now,' it's disconcerting as a fan.

It eventually ends, and that's what I think a lot of athletes forget. It's 10 years after the Olympics, and you won the Olympics, and that's great, but no one cares.

We understand the realities of the sports world. Take Shaq for example, he was traded from here and went on to several other teams after that. But once he was retired, he asked us to retire his jersey. He wanted to be remembered as a Laker.

More time than not, athletes, specifically fighters, have a 15 or 20-year career, and unfortunately, we end up right where we started when it's over. All we have is maybe a round of applause when we walk in a room - Hey, there's the champ! That's great; I want that, but I've got to have something tangible to show for it, too.

I want to see Ronda coming back, her finishing her career with a win. Every athlete deserves that.

With Venus and Serena and their ascension - and you had a lot of kids that saw them and wanted to be like them - it's like any sport, any major athlete, like Michael Jordan in basketball: everybody wanted to be like Mike.

Why is there no respect for Joaquin Andujar?

I was told that there are about 900 gold medal winners in American Olympic history. When I thought about the number 900, I wondered how many kids that are influenced by a gold medal ever get to see a gold medal. What I thought was really neat was that I've already had a couple hundred kids touch my gold medal.

My statue at Ole Miss is a false idol. And it wasn't put there for my benefit. It was put there for Ole Miss and Mississippi.

I think the NBA will certainly survive without Michael Jordan.

Past Olympians have a continuing role within the Olympic family.

As the saying goes, Bruce Jenner is a millionaire, and Mark Spitz is a dentist. It's the wrong sport.

Floyd Paterson? Boy, he's the complete opposite to me. He no way like me. They go down in history for just being athletes. I'm getting more praise and credit for doing what I'm doing now on this show than coming here and beating five of your English champions.