Top 1200 Professional Football Quotes & Sayings

I gave a lot for football because I wanted to be as professional as possible.

I went to Dartmouth College, graduated, and had the opportunity to play two professional sports - I played for the New England Patriots in the NFL and professional lacrosse for the Boston Blazers. I had an injury, so I had to stop so I could heal. But when I was playing football, I wasn't making a lot of money; I wasn't a superstar.

I wanted to be a professional athlete. Young men and women from Montana don't make it to the professional level that often. And I always believed that because I was a great football player that made me better than you. And that's not the case at all.

It's hard to play quarterback in professional football.

My dad has always been involved in football, as both a manager and a player, although only at the amateur and semi-professional level. He was quite successful in our local area and definitely had a massive influence on me and my football development growing up.

Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.

I always told my dad I'd play professional football.

The only thing I've ever wanted to do is play professional football, and be a professional quarterback, so now that it's here and it's getting close, it's just kind of making all that pain and suffering and waiting and working hard worth it.

If I'm having problems, I speak to my older brother, who used to play professional football.

I have a lot to thank Italy for. It's the country that opened the door to professional football for me.

You have to deal with a lot of things when you are a professional football player, and that is not so easy.

We have professional football, but we also have a beautiful game which, wherever you go, can be used as a social tool for change. Football has an unmatchable power.

I don't think my experience with professional football has been what you'd call normal but I don't regret it.

When I first got to college, in my mind, I was going to end up playing professional football. When I tell people this story, they always end up laughing, and I chuckle about it at my own expense. I was a big fan of American football; I played in high school, and I ended up earning the opportunity to play in college.

I think professional sports, football, to use it as an example, it's fundamentally a form of entertainment.

The best thing I can say is professional football is a business. When they are recruiting football players, they are not recruiting model citizens. Everybody has to be aware of this. What's being selected for the NFL is the ability to play and perform on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is secondary.

It was a very exciting time for me to play professional football, finally.

Even when I was growing up as a young boy, when I was playing schoolboy football, there were other guys who were as good as I was, maybe some even better technically. But I was prepared to stick to what was going to make me become a professional football player when I left school, and that was a lot of sacrifice and because my attitude was right.

When you become a professional footballer, there's no written contract that says you have to strive to play first-team football.

I don't even enjoy football, at least professional football, anymore because I'm breaking the game down constantly. You're sitting there watching the plays, and you're talking mental reps on what would I have done here against this coverage or this leverage, this, that. It is what it is.

Playing professional football is something I'll never be able to do.

In Japan, when I went there, there was no professionalism at all. But the biggest advantage was that everyone was united and wanted to progress from amateur football to professional.

I operated a professional football team in L.A. By no means was it the NFL, but I understand what it takes on some level to build and operate a professional sports enterprise in Los Angeles.

My failures were something for me - my first contact with professional football. Though it didn't go all that well, it's not a regret, it's just like that. But looking back, those failures helped me consider football differently, consider the professional game differently.

I'm a professional, and I know in football that everything can change in one day, so I am excited to show everyone my football.

We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.

I became a professional footballer because I love football.

Aston Villa and Middlesbrough, they showed me what is English football. It's tough, it's difficult and they showed me how life is like in professional football.

Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, are the two toughest communities in which you have to put together a winning football team. They are both big metropolitan areas without professional football and major league baseball to sidetrack them.

I can confirm that following specialist medical advice I am having to retire from playing professional football.

Stan Hansen was a tough-as-nails freshman middle linebacker when I was a senior at West Texas State. He was a damn good football player, but he developed some problems with his knees. When football didn't work out he asked me about professional wrestling.

Who is a professional? A professional is someone who has a combination of competence, confidence and belief. A water diviner is a professional. A traditional midwife is a professional. A traditional bone setter is a professional. These are professionals all over the world. You find them in any inaccessible village around the world.

I've been playing semi-professional football since I was 14, really.

Professional football is a job and it's in the entertainment business.

Of course money takes that worry out of your life and enables you to provide for your family - but if it was playing professional football for free or choose another living, then I would choose football every time.

I've played with, and against, some of the best players in the world and have experienced so much that professional football has to offer.

The only thing I ever wanted to be was a professional football player.

To have six years of professional football under my belt already is really something.

Professional football is the most violent thing your eyes have ever seen.

Whatever fighting words you hear from the bargaining table, the reality is that with the new TV contract about to take effect and the incredibly lucrative ancillary revenue streams, both sides know we are on the verge of ushering in the most lucrative payday in the history of professional sports. The history of professional football is that nothing happens until the very last moment.

I feel like I'm a professional. I've been a professional for a number of years. I'm a businesswoman and a tax lawyer and a professional and so that's how I treat other people.

You just manage. It's all about balance. You have to play football and be professional. You come home and you have family life.

It's kind of nice, and rewarding, to have been on the journey from having to play football and work to being a professional.

I didn't realise how my life was changing. When I was 17, 18, 20, I didn't realise how big football was and everything around football. How many people live for football and love football. I was a professional, but I was a supporter.

Since I was in high school, I wanted to play professional football and professional baseball, be a two-sport star.

I wasn't really interested in girls. Only football. I was just enjoying football all the time. There was a five-a-side next to the flat, and I used to play there all the time. It was all about football. I wanted to be a professional. That was my goal. I didn't want to be anything other than a footballer.

In professional football, there are always going to be critics.

I'm not sure I will watch a lot of professional football once I've retired.

When I was three or four, only football was in my head. I went 10 years, and nothing changed - only football, football, football. The strange thing is, nobody played football in my family before.

The most important aspect of my signing with the WFL was not to demean or undermine the National Football League, but rather to make professional football a form of employment where management recognizes its workers as individuals capable of communicating on an intelligent level.

Bobby is the Aaron Rodgers of managers in professional wrestling - Rodgers works magic on the professional football field, but Bobby Heenan did the same thing in a wrestling ring, in a television studio, on a radio program, and he could do the same thing in a newspaper layout. He was a great communicator, and he knew how to generate heat with fans.

I was a young boy from Western Australia with a dream to play professional football.

There's a reason that football players, that still choose to come over to train MMA. They're professional and phenomenal freak athletes and they know how to work as professional athletes. They know how to get better and know how to improve.

In India, the key is to start at the base and start very young. We need professionally trained talent, talent that wants to make football their career, and people must see football as a strong professional career option.

I played 13 years. I did quite well in professional football. Therefore, I do not need.

I always wanted to become a good role model for kids as a professional football player. Unfortunately, I didn't attain that through football, but I was smart enough to realize that professional wrestling provided another opportunity for that.

Ever since I started professional football at 15 there was always that togetherness and solidarity in the dressing room - it is a sanctuary. When I started football everyone believed it.

I don't say I'm necessarily a professional football player. I'm a competitor. That's what was instilled in me as a young boy.

There isn't a single professional sports season now that doesn't go on at least a month too long. Baseball starts in football weather, and football in baseball weather, and basketball overlaps them both.

I look more like a professional golfer than I do an NFL football player.