Athletic Culture Quotes

Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.

In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses

It's not just the players, it's the culture. Sometimes it's the people around them; the people who are looking after them - the money they're given. Some of the families give up their jobs and live off their sons. That would never have happened 10 years ago.

It's not a bad idea to have gossip and talking points in athletics.

Alabama's a football state and you really don't get too many basketball players out there.

In men's sports, people criticize coaches and managers all the time, call out teammates, too, and it's not that huge of a deal. Often, the guy speaking out is even lauded for having the courage to tell the truth. When it happens in women's sports, though, it always seems to be viewed as a nasty, claws-out cat fight.

I'm a product of Pat Riley and his culture.

We grew up in the Rose Park section of Salt Lake City. It's a good neighborhood but a tough one, on the poor side but proud. Sports are big. You learn to fight.

Everyone in Norman knew our block. There were five kids in our neighborhood who started at QB in high school. We had Division-I athletes from a number of sports available to play at any moment.

Growing up in the 1950s, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, boys were supposed to be athletic.

While some of my closest friends were jocks, it seemed that they spoke a different language with each other. Joining in their conversation was fraught with risk.

All in all, I think Kazan is Russia's sportiest city after Moscow, leaving all the others far behind.

When I came over here (the National League), I always heard it was a stronger league, with amphetamines all over the clubhouse, but all I found was Michelob Dry.

Sport is an important part of the Australian psyche. Anybody who thinks that sport is not part of the fabric of Australian life misunderstands this country quite dramatically.

Sporting culture is needed where marks are given to students for sports in schools, jobs are assured for sportsperson, and sponsors are willing to support them through rough times.

Why is it, I wonder, that anyone who displays superior athletic ability is an object of admiration to his classmates, while one who displays superior mental ability is an object of hatred?

This tennis world, this tennis community, is very much a bubble, and it's very easy to get lost in here. You know, there is a real world out there still.

So, if I'm no cheerleader of sports, why write a chapter about it? Sports do have some positive impact on society. They solve problems, such as how to get inner-city kids to spend $175 on shoes. They serve as a backdrop for some of our most memorable commercials. And they remain the one and only relevant application of math. Not only that, but we have sports to thank for most of the last century's advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or at least, losers that hate themselves.

The one thing I did learn at Florida State, I learned to talk trash, believe that

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

I meet athletes from different backgrounds and see they share the same mentality and process as other athletes in other sports.

I'm not necessarily intimidated by really jocky guys. I can talk football with them, you know what I mean?

I grew up playing sports, and being athletic was just something I have always hung on to.

I was a creative kid; I wasn't really into sports, and sports in the South are a pretty big deal. It's like a religion down there.

Some of us love hockey not just for its ferocity and skill but for its underlying code of civility off the ice.