Being an 18 year-old football player, there are temptations. There are girls. There's going out to parties. There's doing this; there's doing that. There is drinking and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day it all comes down to maturity and what you have to do as a man to reach that next level. You have to be disciplined and make sacrifices.
Quite a lot of things are more important than playing football and what we do, we are blessed.
When I talk football with my friends, I don't talk about Tom Brady's hair. I talk about how he handles the blitz, or how he runs his offense. I talk as a fan. I don't want pink jerseys, and I don't want dumbed-down content. I want to be treated as a real fan - because I am proud to be one.
I don't want to find out what celebrity X, who is a Browns fan, thinks of the zone blitz scheme. I don't think that's the sort of thing that I would even ask many people when they come on the show; it's very obtuse, even if they are an expert on football.
Increasingly, football fans are arguing that the game is bloated with too much down time. The officiating is clumsy.
Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things - blocking and tackling.
The essence of football was blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.
I think at some point during the course of the game, I will have an impact - whether it's blocking or whether it's catching the football.
I was a late bloomer. I tried out for the football team, and I got locked off the field. That's how I wound up in drama.
People are so passionate about their favourite artists making it to number 1, it almost reminds me of football fanaticism. Nowadays, it's 'One Direction' vs 'The Wanted.' Back in my day, it was 'Oasis' vs 'Blur'.
So much in football is touching, feeling, walking through, writing it on boards, drawing Xs and Os. And all those are the best for me.
I was at one time a football wife, and there is a certain level of bonding that happens between women who are the wives of football players.
You don't boo at a Kemp rally. You boo at football games.
No players want to hear their own fans booing the players, booing the team, but football is a hard game, and you can't win everything.
When people are booing at the stadium when they win, then it has nothing to do with the results. It is something to do with emotion and feelings, which is an important part of football. The relationship there has nothing to do with results.
I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation - I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, 'cause you'd turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.
You want all the money inside football. We do not have a bottomless pit of money. There are constraints. That's why some deals I have said no to because of the finances of them.
If you don't win a Super Bowl, you're not considered successful in the National Football League. I can remember, when we finally won that first one, feeling so good for the players and fans.
My father was raised with brothers, he was a football player and a boxer, he was a chief petty officer in the Navy, he was a man of his times.
Actually, as that first association continued, we got a little more legitimate. In those days, they asked Boy Scout troops to act as ushers during the football games. So we signed up and I went to many games in full Boy Scout uniform as an usher.
