Sports Hierarchy Quotes

Baseball is the biggest sport in Japan, then soccer, and basketball is... People don't really care about basketball.

This city has two great teams – Liverpool and Liverpool reserves.

The world is not kind to whistleblowers - a term of art with particular resonance in football, the most hierarchical and repressive of organized sports, a world of 'systems' and 'programs' and scripted plays, where reading a medical report requires a security clearance, and practice fields are patrolled like Guantanamo Bay.

There is absolutely no way the best team in the NCAA could even dream of beating the worst team in the NBA? You're talking about men vs. boys.

When you join the NFL, you start from scratch. As long as I've been playing - which has been since I was eight years old - the game becomes harder at every level. Little league, high school, college - they're different stages you have to go through, and professional sport is completely different again.

Charles Barkley played in an era where he was never the guy. He always had to take a back seat to Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isaiah Thomas, because what did they have that he never got? A championship.

I think 'A' sides are extremely important, as close as you can get to international cricket. You are often playing against internationals from different countries and it definitely bridges the gap between our domestic game and international cricket.

They don't work with you to get better in the NBA. Either you're ready or you're out and you go to the G-League or Europe.

If you're playing baseball and thinking about managing, you're crazy. You'd be better off thinking about being an owner.

Running is for animals. You need a brain and a ball for football.

While swimming was always a spotlight sport, I was, if you will, sort of present at the creation when gymnastics became the new star lead-off hitter.

Football's another sport I absolutely despise. Along with baseball. Really, for me, basketball's the only real sport, the only one that matters.

In the wrestling world, we say the Judo guys are just the leftover wrestlers that couldn't make the wrestling team.

When I was in the GB Women's football team at the 2012 Olympics, it was obvious who was in the first XI and who was making up the numbers. Kelly Smith was going to be first-choice striker no matter what, and the other forwards in the squad mentally checked out as a result.

In America, we have three major sports - baseball, football and basketball. They get the most coverage. Then there's things like golf which mop up most of what is left. But track and field? We are way at the bottom of the totem pole.

It's that way all the way down the line. I've got a boy coaching college ball and another son coaching high school. All the way down to summer leagues, all the way down to kids who are 14 years old. All those teams have a closer.

I got into a few games after they were hopelessly won or hopelessly lost, you know, when they put the substitutes in, and finally the water boy, and then me. That is the way it worked.

The most famous cricketers are too big to play county cricket.

I loved baseball, and I was the best at basketball. Golf was sort of third on my list.

In the States, tennis is sixth or seventh on the totem pole as far as sports go.

For many years, Messi and Ronaldo will be the two best. After them, there is Xavi, Andres Iniesta, and others. I hope to be in the top ten.

No matter where they put people, no matter how they try to promote people, there aren't too many people in the game today that are on my level on and off the court.

I was in the top 1 percent of football players. Indie guys are in the bottom 95 percent of wrestlers.

International football is one clog further up the football ladder

I think there are much bigger differences between players in this league than between coaches. There is a big gap between LeBron James and the small forward for whoever. Far bigger than between two coaches.