THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610060200
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: 69 lines
The 25 most intriguing things ever said about sports by people not connected with the games:
``In America it is sports that is the opiate of the masses.'' - Russell Baker.
``Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of aggressions without going to jail for it.'' - Heywood Hale Broun.
``I always turn to the sports page first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page has nothing but men's failures.'' - Earl Warren.
``Give me my golf clubs, fresh air, a beautiful partner, and you can keep my golf clubs and the fresh air.'' - Jack Benny.
``Games lubricate the body and mind.'' - Benjamin Franklin.
``My doctor recently told me that jogging could add years to my life. I think he was right. I feel 10 years older already.'' - Milton Berle.
``When you are discussing a successful coach, you are not necessarily drawing the profile of an entirely healthy person.'' - psychologist Bruce Ogilvie.
``Games played with a ball are too violent for the body. There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.'' - Thomas Jefferson.
``The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.'' - P.G. Wodehouse.
``Football combines the two worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.'' - George Will.
``An atheist is a guy who watches a Notre Dame-SMU football game and doesn't care who wins.'' - Dwight D. Eisenhower.
``Lincoln went down in history as `Honest Abe,' but he never was a jockey. If he had been a jockey, he might have gone down as just `Abe.' '' - Will Rogers.
``You have to be smart enough to understand football, and dumb enough to think it's important.'' - Eugene McCarthy.
``I like playin' softball, but watchin' baseball? I don't want to knock the national pastime, but mister, a lot of nothin' happens.'' - Elvis Presley.
``The only way of preventing civilized man from kicking and beating their wives is to organize games in which they can kick and beat balls.'' - George Bernard Shaw.
``Sports is out there competing in the marketplace for everybody's discretionary dollar. It shouldn't have any more sanctity than Six Flags over Texas or a drive-in.'' - Tank McNamara.
``We're trying to build a university our football team can be proud of.'' - Dr. George L. Cross, Oklahoma University president.
``Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up in hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words, it is war minus the shooting.'' - George Orwell.
``Sport is the very fiber of all we stand for. It keeps our spirits alive.'' - Franklin Roosevelt.
``The road to the boardroom leads through the locker room.'' - David Riesman.
``Prizefighting offers a profession to men who might otherwise commit murder in the street.'' - Norman Mailer.
``Sports nowadays have deteriorated to the extent that they represent a painful thorn in the hearts of all of us who truly love them.'' - Philostatus, 200 A.D.
``Winning is like drinking salt water; it will never quench your thirst. It is an insatiable greed.'' - Dr. Thomas Tutko.
``I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.'' - Rodney Dangerfield.
``If all the year were playing holidays/To sport would be as tedious as to work.'' - William Shakespeare. by CNB