Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings. – George F. Will

…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

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 is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg, quoted by @ESPNNFL, 2014 January 20th