Mike Krzyzewski Quotes

I wasn't ever good enough to be on the baseball team and that sort of stuff.

My sophomore year I spent exactly one day on the JV football team. It was the tryout day.

All American males are failed athletes, and it was big time even if it was Little League. It meant a lot to you.

I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill.

I always wanted to be a futbol player, but I was never good enough.

I don't like the idea of competition - maybe because I kept losing them when I was a kid. Maybe it's better to be the one who loses?

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.

As I'm always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don't. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

Every kid in America dreams of playing in the big leagues and they don't, just because. It's not because they blew out their knee. It's just because they didn't make it.

I'd just like to be good at sports. I'm extremely competitive with absolutely nothing to back it up.

When I first started playing in a youth football league, I was the worst kid on the team. I quit the first year. And then the next year, I was still the worst kid - I didn't even play.

I played football. I was pretty bad at that.

Football was a dream, an opportunity once taken from me - something I thought I'd never be able to do again.

Around the age of 14, I was very discouraged from a coach. It was my first youth club team while playing soccer. She told me at the time that I wasn't good enough to play on the team, that I would never get into the game.

Every time I put myself out there, I get rejected.

I wish I was a great cricket player, but I am not.

If you're at school, children who play football, you give everything to win... If you don't succeed, that's a huge disappointment. Then it's okay to be sad, but better times are coming.

For the longest time, I was auditioning, getting called back, and I had a long string of things not going my way. I thought, 'Maybe this is never going happen. Maybe I'll never book a commercial.'

I remember failing my Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply because ever since I was a kid she had this dream that I would apply to Princeton, but it was just not happening.

I always tried to hide the fact that I was an athlete. I just wanted to be normal.

What is life, after all, but a challenge? And what better challenge can there be than the one between the pitcher and the hitter.

I think, growing up, I was seen as the perfect power forward. For a long time, I thought maybe I was supposed to be a basketball player.

I tried to play rugby but was never very good.

I remember making the all-star team in Little League when I was around 11 years old. I was not a great athlete, but I loved it, so making starting second base in the all-star was great for me. I think someone must have been sick and they slotted me in.

You would not want me on your football team.