Quotes About Athletes

The APR provides a real-time snapshot of what is happening with our individual student-athletes today. However, it does not address some of the realities that exist in sports played during the spring semester, where student-athletes accept professional opportunities before graduating or before exhausting their eligibility.

It's an incredible feeling, 110,000 people energy at that level. What I realized from watching the first day of competition was that athletes that got excited and happy and got the fans into it and clapping, they did better. The athletes that took it too seriously, they didn't do as well as they'd hoped.

There's just so much negative media surrounding professional athletes or sports in general, whether it's kids that are pressured too much or professional athletes making mistakes that influence their family...

The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

I want to take you to a place of pure magic... It's the place athletes call the "zone". Buddhists call "satori" and ravers call "trance". I call it the Silver Desert. It's a place of pure light that holds the dark within it. It's a place of pure rhythm.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can't become athletes. We're watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

Climbing is a process - like yoga or running. We want to go to the spots where we're barely able to hold on. Those are the climbs that force us to become better athletes and grow as climbers.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody elses rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

The coverage [of crimes] is different. It's less angry when white [athletes] are involved, less accusatory, less judgemental. I see that in the pieces that are written and reported. At times it bothers me to the point that I just stop reading...just stop.

I love coaching. I would probably be coaching. I would work in athletes and work with the youth. I would maybe do personal development and athletics. I would coach in high school or college.

American Women: How they mortify the flesh in order to make it appetizing! Their beauty is a vast industry, their enduring allure a discipline which nuns or athletes might find excessive.

I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.

I was glad I did a year abroad, because it helped me as an athlete and as a person. That took me out of my comfort zone. Watching the French athletes train in the Pyrenees made me realise what I had to do to become a top athlete.

About strip clubs and athletes. The best way I can explain why a lot of players end up there is because it's one of the safest places a high-profile person can spend time in a boring city.

I never considered myself a good photographer. I still don't. I thought of myself as a hard worker. My camera was a sponge and I had an instinct that athletes have - anticipation. Photography really represents an enormous amount of anticipation - understanding what might be there the next moment and being prepared for it.

The contracts are structured different than athletes in America, but for me, it was good to move on and go back to playing in the premiere league, which is the best league. It was disappointing, as far as the team goes, but for me, there wasn't much I could do.

Nutrition is also a valuable component that can help athletes both protect themselves and improve performance.

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.

There are all these athletes out there cheating. I am clean and pure.

Many, many times, the kids with the less talent become the better athletes because they're more dedicated to achieving their full potential.

I never competed against athletes. I competed against perfection.

All athletes speak about the mental element of athletics, and it usually boils down to the same thing: if you can remove your ego from the game, you can function with much more clarity and you are more likely to succeed. Wouldn't it be interesting if we all began speaking about the mental element of our lives in this way?

But as much as I am personally proud for winning five championships, I'm equally proud just being part of a women's division that has gotten so much better with all these great athletes here.

I think the sport needs the help to continue to motivate athletes.

To be sure, [NASCAR] stars were initially ex-bootleggers for the most part drawn from that talent pool in the Carolinas hills: "good ol' boys" as they referred to themselves. That's exactly how they would be described in the press that slowly became enamored with their raucous life style. That has all changed, with the drivers of today polished and clean-cut athletes who are expected to behave like commercial puppets in public.

Superior athletes want to be accountable for their own results. —

Athletes, coaches and parents today are increasingly aware of the danger of concussion, and this awareness influences decisions about buying new and reconditioned football helmets.

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

But at the same time, my parents always encouraged my brother and me to be happy with what we were doing. My parents were athletes in high school; my mom and my dad were the stars of the basketball team, but they never pushed my brother and me to be anything we didn't want to be.

When you see athletes like me win gold medals, you only see the finished product, you dont see the real effort that the likes of Ron have put into making that product. Without the Ron Roddans of this world, you would have no sport.

There are things about some professional athletes that I cannot stand-the pretense, the egos, the pomposity, the greed.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

I worry when athletes are simply used by their universities to produce revenue, to make money for them, nothing to show at the back end. I grew up with a lot of players who had very, very tough lives after the ball started bouncing for them. And that's why I'm going to continue to fight.

The London Games will be designed for the athletes and we will provide them with the very best venues and the very best conditions to pursue their sporting dreams in London.

A lot of athletes have star quality, but they just can't perform in front of a camera. So no matter how good-looking you are, no matter what kind of presence you have, you still have to be able to be a convincing performer to become a star.

Now, I talk to athletes who answer questions with a 'yeah'. I realize I used to do that. Or they answer very quickly and you stand there trying to come up with another question to ask. I've seen both sides and it's been very educational.

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.

For athletes, the Olympics are the ultimate test of their worth.

You're always struggling because you're not playing on a 53-and-a-third by a 120-yard field. You're not playing on a baseball diamond. With golf, every field is different and every atmosphere is different. The grass is different. The weather is different. You're outside. You're not in a stadium. There are so many different variables, so you never master golf. So, I think good athletes like a challenge.

Ideally we're going to stay at an American hotel. We just want to take every precaution. Because if you get sick out there, and you're playing in that hot sun and you get depleted, it's going to be a problem. So that would be the only other thing I think that athletes on a whole are going to be worried about. But again, we have to do our part and take every precaution and be smart.

The Olympic Games are for 'the youth of the world,' but they're organized and scored by countries. It's no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC's chauvinistic coverage: don't bother! They're actually more above-the-fray than most. Also, their coverage is not shown anywhere except America - I know, it's because I can't get it that I'm watching Women's Air Pistol - so can't ruffle feathers elsewhere.

Everybody dismissed athletes as being purely physical, but when you retire, you go from such an intense brain time - study of defense, audibles, hand signals, plays, adjustments - to a level of mental inactivity that's hard to comprehend. It's a big reason why I stay so active. Creating, evolving.

I think boxers are the greatest athletes in all sports for the simple fact that they don't cry. That is mind-blowing. Have you ever been punched in the nose? Oh my gosh, it hurts so bad. They have to go back to corner, where some little man yells at them. 'Shut up, I just got punched in the face!'... If I was a boxer, do you know who I would hire as my corner man? My mom.

I want to keep coaching as long as I can. I love teaching and working with student athletes and I love being at the University of Tennessee.

As athletes, we have ups and downs. Unfortunately, you can't pick the days they come on.

Truthfully, this is how I approach my workout: I want to be the best athlete I can possibly be. If I can out-perform some of the better athletes then I'm happy. When I look at the NFL or the NBA, these guys look how I want to look - it's useable, functional muscle.

Most of the time, I'm fighting guys who are 22 years old, former college wrestlers, athletes, kids who are in much better shape than me. Often people who are much bigger and wider than me. It can be dispiriting at first.