I always prided myself on trying to break the stigma of the 'dumb jock.'
I disagree that an athlete can't be intelligent. Some people think that, in basketball, we have a bunch of masculine adults who don't know how to control themselves. They're feeble-minded and can't engage or articulate ideas. That's a narrative they keep trying to paint.
When I won the world championship, in 1972, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.
Being a 6-foot-tall tennis player is not great for a girl's social life.
I think, in the eyes of a lot of circles, especially within football, I'm the soft guy. But I'm fine with being the soft, healthy guy.
When I tell people I'm going to the Olympics, they're like: 'What do you do, track and field? Pole vault? Are you a volleyball player?' No one ever guesses tae kwon do.
People say the English players don't come to Italy because they look down on Serie A, but that's just not true.
Scottish football is full of hammer throwers.
I'm not as big a soccer fan as people might imagine, being British.
I always seem to get parts where I play the sports professional - and that's not me at all!
I try not to be a typical athlete.
I look more like a professional golfer than I do an NFL football player.
People were actually approaching me on the street and thinking that I was an athlete. They couldn't quite place it, but a runner, or swimmer or something.
I definitely grew up as a small-town... I guess you could call it the 'small-town football player,' according to the stereotype. I wasn't involved in music at all.
Female athletes are stereotyped by the general population--and usually as homosexuals.
I've always thrown like a girl.
