Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.
Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.
Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.
A hard-fought, well-fought, hairline-close game is as classical in sports as tragedy is in the theater. Victory is contained within defeat, and defeat is contained within victory. That's the way it is in the best of games. What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.
We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions.
What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.
You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional.
Don't just stand back and play the way you're coached. A great player must rise to the occasion and turn the game around on his own.
We play with enthusiasm and recklessness. We aren't afraid to lose. If we win, great; but win or lose, it is the competition that gives us pleasure.
Sport is a product of human culture. America seems to need football at this state of our social development. When you get ninety million people watching a single game on television, it ... shows you that people need something to identify with.
You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
