…trying to maintain order during a legalized gang brawl involving 80 toughs with a little whistle, a hanky and a ton of prayer. – A veteran NFL referee describing his duties, quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, Amer

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

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 Super Bowl has become more of a staging event for a week of debauchery than a contest to determine the best team in the National Football League. – Peter H. King, San Francisco Examiner, 1980