I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.
When I first came in the league, I thought Jack Clark and Steve Garvey were big. Then all of sudden it seemed like everyone was that big.
To me, doing the Olympics in 1992 in Barcelona for NBC, just seeing the Dream Team take the floor, was a thrill for me. I don't think there was another team in any sport with that high level of athletes playing together.
'E.T.' and 'Star Wars' were cult movies then and opened up a brand new world of adventure and mystery. But as much as I would have loved to be friends with E.T., I realized that following in the footsteps of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan was more realistic.
It's amazing what we remember as sports fans, right?
Lakers were able to maintain a certain level of talent and success and so were the Celtics. So after awhile it became part of people's sports lore...
We have about 4 million people who have voted for who they want to see in the Hall of Fame. There are some people they put down that are pretty good players. You have Ray Guy, Jim Plunkett, Lester Hayes and Donnie Shell.
For 30 years I wrote for newspapers and magazines, wrote books on the Dallas Cowboys' dynasties of the '70s and '90s, wrote about Michael Jordan in Chicago and Barry Bonds in the Bay Area, even wrote columns for ESPN.com from 2004 to 2006.
The Boys of Summer were heroes in Brooklyn for a full postwar decade partly because the players could not entertain higher offers.
It would mean a lot to me to get into the Hall of Fame, to be grouped with some of the greatest players in history.
I could barely speak after I was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers. I was going to play for the defending Super Bowl champions.... I immediately thought of all the great players on the team. I was in awe, as I had watched these soon-to-be legends play on television. They epitomized for me what football was all about: the love of the game, the professional approach, and the desire to win.
There are many stars and a few super-stars in sport. There are champions who bag a coronet now and then, and there are others who dominate some game year after year. In other words there are Bobby Jones and Helen Wills.
As a player you get to meet Hall of Fame members and now to have my name in the same sentence makes me speechless.
The Madden Curse has really taken on a life of its own. People just love talking about it, and it is what it is, but I look at it as a challenge.
Whenever I think of baseball, the first name that comes to mind is Babe Ruth. What the Babe was to baseball, Shula is to football coaching. There are certain figures in sports who are larger than the games they play or coach, and Don Shula is one of those.
Although I think of myself as the greatest heavyweight, I do respect the legends of the past for what they did. But they are not my heroes.
I remember, in 1999, the first time I met Steve Cram, I didn't know who he was. It was only later, on YouTube, I started watching Seb Coe, Ovett. So it's nice to be recognised as one of the best guys in the world.
I went to Moses Malone's golf tournament in Houston, and I've been hooked ever since.
The Steph Currys, the Jordan Spieths, those guys are exciting to watch.
In an All-Star game the players are having more fun than usual and showing their personalities more than usual. And there are guys in this game - I'm not one of them - who are historically good. First-ballot Hall of Famers.
Well, (Michael) Jordan was definitely one of the kings of the game. There's no question that he was one of the more dominant figures. If you look at the top ten players of all time, he was certainly one of the most dominant guys.
Shaq and Muhammad Ali's my favorite two athletes of all time.
Tiger Woods and Roger Federer: those two are born winners.
In 1930, I was at the top of my career. I won the Most Valuable Player award.
I'm not a sportswriter. I don't get to vote. I don't get the ballot in the mail, so it's out of my hands either way. I can say that in the history of the Hall of Fame, there are no suspicions about guys who are in the Hall of Fame.
