Frank Deford quotes:

I criticize the NFL in many ways, but I think it's made great strides. I think college basketball, great strides. College football means so much to alumni, doesn't it? It sort of represents the school. It's when you go back; it's at the beginning of the school year.

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism.

She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes.

I think there are white alumni out there who wouldn't mind having an African American president of their school, but would be reluctant to have an African American coach, because he represents the school so. I think it's just sheer backward racism.

I grew up in Baltimore and that's why I root for the Orioles. I'm very suspicious of people who move and take on a new team. You should stick with the team of your youth all the way to your grave. That shows a sense of loyalty and devotion.

If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something.

The joy sometimes is in the simple beauty.

To see the glory in sport, where somebody comes from behind and does something, sinks a shot in the last second or throws a touchdown pass or hits a home run, there is a beauty in that, and at the end of the day, that's why we love sports more than anything else.

I think at its best, sport does bring us together.

I think one of the most immoral things is college football and basketball, where everybody is making money except the players.

Hockey is the only place where a guy can go nowadays and watch two white guys fight.

In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first draft of human beings.

the National Football League needs "a guardian, not a CEO" to deal with the fact that "the sport is simply more and more identified with violence, both in its inherent nature and in its savage personnel.

You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches.

I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.

If the players aren't getting paid, there's something terribly, terribly wrong, and that's true only in the United States. Everywhere else, where money is involved with sport, the players get paid. But these poor kids in college, they're doing it for free, and that's just disgraceful.

I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."

I don't understand blogs. People used to write to make money, no? You didn't give it away. I have nothing against blogs. I don't have a problem with them. But it's like, 'What are you doing? Why aren't you working?

So much of life, so much of work, is luck.

Usually when an athlete gets a reputation it sticks with him, even when he's an old man.

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.

I don't think there are many kids who sit around and want to be actors. I don't think there are many kids who want to sit around and want to be senators. But so many of us want to be athletes, so we're envious of them and we put them up on that pedestal.