I tried golf for a while, but I wasn’t very good at it, so I didn’t play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically.
One of the reasons I’m an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn’t athletic and didn’t have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.
Academics often discount the value of top-rated sports programs in helping to develop a campus life and in contributing to the overall success of a college or university. Like it or not, the sports programs a college or university has are the front page of that university.
Cricket is a self-sustaining industry; but corporates need to realise that other sports don’t have that luxury. This is the time when they need to invest, and keep the faith. Every sport has the potential to create world champions. Imagine India as a country full of world champions. Why imagine? Let’s just make it happen.
I remember when I was growing up, I always wore glasses and so if I was on-stage or just being able to move around playing sports, I was never really able to because I had glasses holding me back. Wearing contacts has just been very helpful.
In my background in sports, I am huge believer in statistics and I think that’s one area where in wrestling we’ve seen some cool stuff get over. To me, I think there’s real opportunities to do some interesting things just in terms of building up athletes the way UFC has as legitimate competition.
My biggest pet peeve are just girls who go to sports bars who have no intention on caring what teams are playing, like they’re looking for just a night out. That drives me more crazy than anything else. Like, don’t pretend to be a sports fan.
Owning a popular sports team is very different than any other type of business. They don’t throw parades when Apple has the biggest quarter in corporate history. People don’t call and email asking for anyone from the team to come visit their sick child. They don’t cry as they request a jersey of their child’s favorite player to be buried with them.
I don’t like sports where it’s like, you watch a guy on a motorcycle flip or something, then another guy does it, it looks exactly the same, and then at the end one guy gets higher points! It seems so arbitrary; I don’t know who’s ahead ever.
People who think they know what they are talking about when they talk about baseball include the announcers and all of the sports press – no matter how much evidence you present them to the contrary they will continue to think that what they think is right.
At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn’t allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn’t do anything with my classmates.
After ‘Sports’ came out in the fall of 1983, everything changed for me. Four of the album’s singles became top-10 hits, and by the end of June in 1984, the album was No. 1 on the Billboard chart. It was quite a ride, and for the first time I had enough money to live the way I wanted.
I was always very different from the other kids. I have an I.Q. of 156. I didn’t play sports. I thought big. I thought I could achieve great things. I don’t want to sound megalomaniac, but my whole life is about doing something for the world, from as far back as I can remember.
I have to say that sports is what kept me out of trouble. No matter the circumstances, my mom kept us playing sports. She worked hard to provide for us and even harder to make sure we always stayed active. Whether it was football or basketball, we were playing one sport or another year-round.
Always the notorious red-light district of sports, boxing today is as troubled as it was even in the days when the Mob called the shots. There are too many lawsuits and too few heroes. Absurd mismatches and fraudulent rankings by unaccountable offshore sanctioning bodies have disgusted fans.
You could say I’m the pioneer in the way I have changed some people’s perception of not only sports people but of gay men in general. It’s also important that people also realise that as much as a pioneer I’m also just a normal person. I’m normal but I’ve done something that’s pretty powerful as well.
My parents were very supportive of my chess. When I got home after a game of chess, having missed school or something, they always made me feel very welcome; I didn’t feel guilty at all about pursuing chess with such fervour. They never, for instance, perceived sports as a rival to academics.
I think as far as any kind of pressure on a football team or on an individual in professional sports really depends not only on that individual but the leadership they have on the team and the leadership they have on the coaching staff. A lot of times, they can divert some of those pressures off of the individual and off of the team.
Julie, Mia and I just met for a couple days, doing some work but really under the guise of having fun. We do events like the Women’s Sports Foundation Dinner, where we get to not only do a good thing for the community but we get to hang out with one another again.
Every wrestling show is now designed to be the greatest show ever. In contrast, the NWA show is different. It didn’t tire people out to watch, something was allowed to register. It is the exact antithesis of planned, big budget, choreographed, scripted sports entertainment, and that is what makes the show so different.
Things that are unique and rare will cost a lot of money. Houses in East Hampton and Malibu will cost a lot of money because there just aren’t that many of them. The value of sports has appreciated because it’s the only thing that people have to watch live.
The word ‘geek’ today does not mean what it used to mean. A geek isn’t the skinny kid with a pocket protector and acne. There can be computer geeks, video game geeks, car geeks, military geeks, and sports geeks. Being a geek just means that you’re passionate about something.
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.
When I’m doing sports, I always think of how it’s related to singing, and when I watch tennis, I learn a lot for my singing: how the players are focused, how they use their technique, and, in the case of Roger Federer, how effortless it is and how beautiful it is to watch – like bel canto, in a way. That’s how singing should be.
Tribalism, after all, is part of our evolutionary DNA. The need to identify with a group, to belong and commune with like-minded people is not only biological, it’s what has helped motivate our desire for and devotion to all kinds of important cultural institutions, from organized religion to sports fandom.
