Ara Parseghian Quotes

In football, you can always maim a person if you wanted to.

Whenever you're falling or getting tackled, try to protect yourself. But that's part of the game; that's part of football.

I'm always a player who has taken fairly rough treatment, to be honest. I think my time in Scotland typified that because I think there was one game where I set a record for being fouled ten or 11 times in a game.

Only in football is long-term injury the result not of accidents but of the game played properly.

Of course, in pro ball, they never hit the quarterback in practice.

There is no question that in the '50s and '60s, black players got thrown at more. That's not a negative comment. It may come out that way, but that's the way it was. Hitting another player was part of the game; hitting a player in the head is not.

I went for a tackle with Radamel Falcao against Colombia, and he just dropped to the floor. I said to him 'Just get up!'

Look at rugby, the national sport, you have guys weighing 130kg, 140kg, who can run like sprinters full clip into each other causing brain damage constantly on that field.

Ronnie Lott - he got a really good shot on me once and I learned that unless I wanted to shorten my career, I needed to steer clear of his path.

I understand football is a freaky sport, and injuries happen.

I mean, football is a violent sport.

Ask a receiver, can we take his gloves off because he's catching the ball too well? Nobody is going to be overly happy about that.

I've always been someone who said that football is a contact sport.

I don't want to be making tackles.

Football is a contact sport and sometimes is difficult to measure that.

Sometimes defenders kick me without the ball and I don't say anything and no one sees.

We all understand what we signed up for, but then again, you don't want this to be a game that puts people in wheelchairs at age 40.

Football, no one wants to ram into people. It's not human nature. You have to have a lot of incentive to ram into somebody to benefit others.

We all sign up where you might get hurt. That's what makes this league a little bit different than any other in professional sports.

It's the NFL, so anytime you get to go out and get to play against another team, there's going to be some physicality.

I don't know how many times you see 10s tackle each other.

That's football. It's going to happen. Guys are going to get hurt.

It's not like I'm a lineman and no matter what, the game is physical. There's weeks where I get hit a lot and weeks where I don't.

It's part of the sport, getting hit.

In soccer, you don't want to see anybody get hurt.