Dick Vitale Quotes

Rather than saying that the commissioner is hired by the owners and therefore is subservient to them, you have to look at whether or not the players are getting a fair shake.

A lot of players know I've been around 13 years and this is my second lockout. I got a lot of respect. I know what's going on both for the league and the union.

If a franchise wants me, they'll take me.

I can't speak on anybody else's free agencies, how that's going, but for myself, it helps to kind of be patient and let it happen.

The league, is doing well. It is just a matter of trying to sort some things out with my contract.

We need a system where all of our teams have the opportunity to compete and to make a few dollars. That's not a bad desire for collective bargaining for a sports league, and it's great for our fans.

As I learn more and more about the six-year extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it's obvious to me that NFL owners understood that they were going to get a new deal done at all costs.

I think the National Football League needs a new union. The heavyweights of this union are not heavyweights enough.

The people who run the game, they are the ones who want to change it and make people believe that it's different somehow. It's not different, the only difference is that some ballplayers today have a chance for a four- or five-year contract and they can make big money.

The only thing wrong with the NBA - or any other professional sport, for that matter - is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

Obviously, in the NBA, there's a lot of different decisions that people make. The whole thing in the NBA is that people sometimes have an opportunity to go where they want.

The N.F.L.'s rule on underclassmen should be abolished, and the N.B.A. should be discouraged from adding an age limit.

The only way we protect ourselves, the only way a player gets what he wants is by holding out.

We didn't see [the NBA lockout] as a victory at all. It was far from what we set it out to accomplish in bargaining, but I thought it was a fair compromise.

Our position is that we can sit down and talk to try to solve our problems through dialogue.

I've seen where teams pay to get a player, like when Los Angeles paid to get Wayne Gretzky.

Pro basketball is a very mercenary endeavor.

This is a coup for commissioner Bud Selig. I'm surprised it's as good as it is.

There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.

Negotiations can create conditions that can lead to solutions.

Why cannot we sit down together with a board of arbitration, honestly state our difficulties and try to work out a sane method of procedure?

Negotiation is not trading. Negotiation is creating new and original solutions.

If we can’t agree on the facts, how can we agree on the solutions?