I quickly learned what many Sunday widows already realized — that football is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbal, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time. – Arnold J. Mandell, “A Psychiatric Study of Professional Football,” 1974 [An inte

The greatest gap in sports is between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl. The winner has confetti, parades, rings, the whole thing. The loser puts his head down and goes to his house. – John Madden, NBC Sports press conference, Super Bowl XLIII (2009)

Speed, strength, and the inability to register pain immediately. – Reggie Williams, when asked his greatest strengths as a football player

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact. – George Plimpton, Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback, 1965