1. Dick Butkus: “I wouldn’t ever set out to hurt anyone deliberately unless it was, you know, important like a league game or something.”

2. Jim Finks, when asked after a loss what he thought of the officiating: “I’m not allowed to comment on lousy referees.”

3. Erma Bombeck: “Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”

4. Lincoln Kennedy, Oakland Raiders tackle, on his decision not to vote: “I was going to write myself in, but I was afraid I’d get shot.”

5. Arthur Marshall: “I would have thought that the knowledge that you are going to be leapt upon by half-a-dozen congratulatory, but sweaty team-mates would be inducement not to score a goal.”

6. Dave Barry: “I have seen women walk right past a TV set with a football game on and – this always amazes me – not stop to watch, even if the TV is showing replays of what we call a “good hit,” which is a tackle that causes at least one major internal organ to actually fly out of a player’s body.”

7. Unknown: “One of the great disappointments of a football game is that the cheerleaders never seem to get injured.”

8. Joe Theismann: “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

9. Mary McGrory: “Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become.”

10. Terrell Owens, of the San Francisco 49ers, was asked for one word to describe himself. He said “confident.” When asked for another word he said “very.”

11. Tim Green: “Let’s face it, you have to have a slightly recessive gene that has a little something to do with the brain to go out on the football field and beat your head against other human beings on a daily basis.”

12. Frank Gifford: “Pro Football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors.”

13. Big Daddy Lipscomb: “I just wrap my arms around the whole backfield and peel ‘em one by one until I get to the ball carrier. Him I keep.”

14. Heywood Hale Broun: “Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of your aggressions without going to jail for it.”

15. George Will: “Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”

16. Steve Henderson: “I’d catch a punt naked, in the snow, in Buffalo, for a chance to play in the NFL.”

17. Arnold Mandell: “Football is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbalized, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time.”

18. Tony Kornheiser: “Men are clinging to football on a level we aren’t even aware of. For centuries, we ruled everything, and now, in the last ten minutes, there are all these incursions by women. It’s our Alamo.”

19. Phyllis Diller: “The reason women don’t play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.”

20. George Rogers: “I want to rush for 1,000 or 1,500 yards, whichever comes first.”

21. Doug Plank: “Most football teams are temperamental. That’s 90% temper and 10% mental.”

22. Chuck Mills: “When it comes to football, God is prejudiced – toward big, fast kids.”

23. Luke Salisbury: “Watching football is like watching pornography. There’s plenty of action, and I can’t take my eyes off it, but when it’s over, I wonder why the hell I spent an afternoon doing it.”

24. Unknown: “The game of life is a lot like football. You tackle your problems, block your fears, and score your points when you get the opportunity.”

25. Sue Lawley: “American football makes rugby look like a Tupperware party.”

26. Frank Middleton, Oakland Raiders; prior to Super Bowl XXXVII he was asked what was the best thing his ex-head coach Jon Gruden (now the Tampa Bay head coach and his opponent in the Super Bowl) did for the Oakland Raiders. Frank said: “Leave.”

27. Torrin Polk, University of Houston receiver, on his coach, John Jenkins: “He treats us like men. He lets us wear earrings.”

28. Terry Bradshaw: “I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

29. Reggie Williams, when asked his greatest strengths as a football player : “Speed, strength, and the inability to register pain immediately.”

30. Elbert Hubbard: “College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.”

there are 50 more after the jump

31. Randy Cross: “The NFL, like life, is full of idiots.”

32. Merle Kessler: “Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers.”

33. Joe Jacoby: “I’d run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl”
Matt Millen: “To win, I’d run over Joe’s mom, too.”

34. Blackie Sherrod, on an auto wreck involving hard-living quarterback Bobby Layne: “After indulging is some heavy, late-night research with some scholarly friends, Bobby was driving back to his hotel, innocently enough, when he was side-swiped by several empty cars lurking at curbside.”

35. Duffy Daugherty: “A tie is like kissing your sister.”

36. Jeff Kemp: “Rapport? You mean like, ‘You run as fast as you can, and I’ll throw it as far as I can’?”

37. President Gerald Ford: “I had pro offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, who were pretty hard up for linemen in those days. If I had gone into professional football the name Jerry Ford might have been a household word today.”

38. Emmitt Smith, when asked about new Cowboy coach Bill “The Big Tuna” Parcells: “I have not talked to him, but I have been eating a lot of tuna.”

39. Jim Brosnahan, the defense attorney representing the city of Oakland in the NFL team’s suit against the city of Oakland, after a couple of lively courtroom exchanges between Brosnahan and Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, this exchange took place in court: BROSNAHAN-”Would it be fair to say you turned around the Raiders in the 1960s?” DAVIS-”You’re being too kind to me.” BROSNAHAN-”It won’t last. Let’s enjoy the moment.”

40. Conan O’Brien, on the NFL starting its own cable network: This is good because up until now, the only channel to find 24-hour coverage of the NFL players was Court TV.”

41. Erma Bombeck: “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”

42. George Will: “Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.

43. Deacon Jones: “I was the originator of smack. Some guys rattle with smack; with other guys it rolls right off their shoulders like nothing.”

44. Max McGee: “When it’s third and ten, you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time.”

45. Pressbox Maxim: “Playing football in the morning is like eating cabbage for breakfast.”

46. Tex Schramm, responding to holdout running back’s description of him as “sick and demented and dishonest”, Schramm replied laughing: “That’s not bad. He got two out of three right.”

47. Jason Taylor, on why he presented the whole Miami Dolphins locker room with a gift box of of products from one of his sponsors, Neutrogena: “To rectify some of the ugliness going on in this locker room.”

48. Randy Moss, explaining the no-look, over-the-shoulder lateral to Moe Williams for a 59-yard touchdown: “It’ a once-in-a-lifetime thing that only happens every so often.”

49. Rod Smith, when asked if he had ever seen a similar play to the Randy Moss to Moe Williams, no-look, over-the-shoulder lateral play: “Yeah, on PlayStation.”

50. Bill Curry: “He’s a leading leader on this football team.”

51. Leroy Hoard, describing his running style: “You need two yards, I’ll get you three. You need 10 yards, I’ll get you three.”

52. Ray Lewis: “Pain is only temporary, no matter how long it lasts.”

53. Gary Anderson, FG kicker,: “One thing I’ve learned over the years is sometimes if you make kicks early in the game, you don’t have to make them late.”

54. Phil Simms, remarking on how underdogs never give up hope in football games: “I remember one time, playing for the Giants, when we were playing the unbeatable Dallas Cowboys, they were 8 and 1.”

55. Jeff Gordon, St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer, commenting on the poor attendance at Arizona Cardinal games: “If Marc Bulger throws an interception in Sun Devil Stadium and nobody is there to see it, is it still an interception?”

56. Lou Groza, NFL Hall of Fame kicker: “Old place-kickers never die, they just go on missing the point.”

57. John Romano, St. Petersburg Times reporter, commenting on Big East Conference Commissioner Mike Tranghese’s belief that the BCS only needs to be tweaked: “This is like a man who, day after day, steps in a puddle of mud. Instead of looking for a new route, he seeks a better polish for his shoes.”

58. Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, on how football players will have different attitudes in the future.: “Twenty years from now, today’s football players will be saying, ‘Back in my day, we didn’t do all the outlandish stuff these kids are doing. We kept it dignified, with Sharpies and cell pho

59. Sam Wyche, who had his vocal cords accidentally cut during a biopsy and now has trouble yelling across the field during practices, relating what some old players of his had to say: “Why didn’t his happen 20 years ago? I wouldn’t have had to run as many laps.”

60. “Downtown” Julie Brown, prior to the 1993 Super Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills, asked Emmitt Smith: “What are you going to wear in the game Sunday?”

61. Will Allen, then at Syracuse University, upon being introduced to Hall of Famer Lynn Swann and being told that Swann was one of the greatest wide receivers in NFL history said: “And what team did you play for?”

62. Paul Tagliabue, NFL Commissioner: “I’m a firm believer that all sports will eventually be global. Someday, we may have a quarterback from China named Yao Fling.”

63. John Lynch, Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety, commenting on the Budweiser beer commercials featuring the me-first football player Leon: “Great commercials during the game. Especially like the Budweiser one with Keyshawn…I mean Leon.”

64. Deion Sanders, on why he doesn’t like the two-week break between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl: “Having two weeks off gives family, friends and the media more time to get on your nerves.”

65. Marvin Lewis, suggesting that coaches should be able to add monikers on players uniforms, like “He Hate Me” during training camp, he suggested the following examples: “He Doesn’t Listen,”; He Jumps Offsides”; and “He Can’t See.”

66. Craig Kilborn, CBS late-night television host, commenting on how crass Janet Jackson’s halftime incident was during Super Bowl XXXVIII: “so crass ad so sleazy that Fox television is launching its own investigation (as to) why they didn’t do it first.”

67. Chad Bratzke, explaining life in the NFL: “The pads don’t keep you from getting hurt. They just keep you from getting killed.”

68. Bret Lewis, Los Angeles radio announcer: “The Philadelphia Eagles signed wide receiver Terrell Owens despite his reputation as a clubhouse cancer. A few days later, the home of the Eagles, Veterans Stadium, implodes. Connect the dots, people.”

69. Tom Arnold, of Fox Sports Net’s Best Damn Sports Show Period, during the “Things you wouldn’t say to…. segment, said this about Warren Sapp: “Hey, Warren, the Raiders signed you to a seven-year deal. I guess Bill Callahan was right — they are the dumbest team in America.”

70. Jim Saccomano, Broncos’ media-relations director, talking about how teams manipulate reporters.: “There’s the truth, the whole truth, the perceived truth and then there’s innuendo. Most of the time, (reporters) have been told what’s going on, but sometimes there’s an agenda under it.”

71. Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle reporter, commenting on the announcement that the NFL hopes to put a team in Los Angeles by 2008: “L.A. greeted the news with widespread riots, crazy parties and celebrations, honking and shouting, cares overturned and set afire, and thousands of gunshots fired into the air. Or, maybe that stuff had nothing to do with the NFL announcement.”

72. Bill Simmons, ESPN the Magazine: “I gave it some thought, and here’s what I decided: My favorite Matsui is still Matt Suhey.”

73. Ricky Williams: “I didn’t quit football because I failed a drug test, I failed a test because I was ready to quite football.”

74. William “The Refrigerator” Perry: “I’ve been big ever since I was little.”

75. Rodney Landingham, University of Nevada defensive back, arrested on charges of bank robbery, in a jailhouse interview was quoted as saying: “It would’ve been worth it if I hadn’t gotten caught.”

76. Jack “The Assassin” Tatum, former Raiders defensive back: “I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault.”

77. Howie Long, having fun at the expense of Fox colleague Terry Bradshaw: “In Montana, they renamed a town after an all-time great, Joe Montana. Well, a town in Massachusetts changed their name to honor my guy Terry Bradshaw–Marblehead.”

78. Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, suggesting that Terry Bradshaw wasn’t very smart: “He’s so dumb, he couldn’t spell ‘cat’ if you spotted him the ‘c’ and the ‘a’.”

79. Deion Sanders, commenting on the troubled Randy Moss: “He’s like a beautiful woman who can’t cook, doesn’t want to clean and doesn’t want to take care of the kids. You really don’t want her, but she’s so beautiful that you can’t let her go.”

80. Jay Leno, commenting on the NCAA plans, to reach college athletes, by launching an anti-gambling campaign on the Cartoon Network: “You know what’s sad about this? Not the gambling, but the best way to reach college athletes is the Cartoon Network.”

and the funniest one of all:

Oiler coach Bum Phillips: When asked by Bob Costas why he takes his wife on all the road trips, Phillips responded, “Because she is too damn ugly to kiss goodbye.”

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