Athletic Sacrifice Quotes

My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that.

This is football, man. We all sign up to get hit.

When I was 13, tennis became more of my life. It's when I gave up skiing, I gave up winter sports. I still played varsity basketball my freshman year of high school - basketball was the last sport I gave up for my tennis.

A different type of human has to play that sport. Hockey players keep fighting - nobody cares what's wrong with you, as long as you have one foot to skate on, you keep playing.

I get paid to get hit in the head.

I hated to miss games... at the height of my career, I missed a lot of games due to... just a hamstring pull. And I hated sitting out. I just hated it. You play for your team, but you also play for the people who attend the games.

I wanted to drop the weight class to go to the 125s, and I played it off on how easy it was going to be. 'I can do this, no problem, I always cut weight.' I pushed my body to the extreme.

When I started really playing music, I pretty much quit sports. I quit everything.

I don't believe in playing hurt, in taking injections to cover the pain.

When you train as hard as we do, bad things happen sometimes. It's just part of the sport.

You play 162 days, and you play every day, or you try to play every day, and it's going to take a toll on your body. But that's what we're out here for. We're out here to play.

I was champion, off and on, for quite a few years, and I never missed one title match from an injury. I got hurt lots of times, but the reality is you've got so much pinned on you and so much tied onto you, the company and your peers can't afford for you to get hurt.

I was a piece of meat. I was betrayed by the business of football.

Obviously, that off-the-ice battle I went through, plus injuries I came back from, I always felt the fans are really knowledgeable there and respected and appreciated guys that gave whatever they had and guys that fought through things.

But put my body through a lot, you know, but it's the price for your body feeling this way for winning. Did I win? I didn't win a championship, but I've done a lot of good things in this first year back, and hopefully I can continue it.

I don't know if cortisone is good for you or not. But to take a shot every other ball game is more than I wanted to do and to walk around with a constant upset stomach because of the pills and to be high half the time during a ball game because you're taking painkillers ... I don't want to have to do that.

People think I'm soft and bailed out on basketball. But it was five knee surgeries.

Nobody told me that I would be just a player to be exchanged. Nobody likes to be a part of that situation, especially not me.

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.

I'm a wrestler, so I'm used to not being paid, and I'm used to doing five or six competitions a day and paying someone else to allow me into the event.

That's what you do all the hard work for, to play in situations that put your body through gruelling times. If you're not up to it, pull out.

Some of the great John Wayne hero things that have ever happened in football happened because people play hurt.

I go out there and get my eyes gouged, my nose busted, my body slammed. I love the pain of the game.

I'm nothing more than a sports slave.

There are three things an athlete must do. You must be in physical condition ... You must execute properly and quickly the fundamentals ... and you must have eagerness to sacrifice personal interests or glory for the welfare of the team.