A Quote by Charlie Pierce

If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports.
On television, I have watched countless athletes from different countries, sports and Olympics stand proudly at the top of the podium and shed tears. They symbolized the Olympics for me because Olympic medals represent all of the hard work and sacrifices made by the athletes as well as the people who helped them reach the top of their sports.
It's great to learn more about sports I'm probably less familiar with - stock car racing, rodeo, e-sports - and realize that a lot of the people at the center of those sports bring the same level of passion, commitment and disciple that I try to with football. Sports is a way of life for billions of people around the planet.
So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.
I could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write 'sports sports sports sports sports' for three pages.
I squirm when I see athletes praying before a game. Don't they realize that if God took sports seriously he never would have created George Steinbrenner.
The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children - children with mental retardation - can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.
Yes, I did move to New York when I was eighteen to do sports broadcasting. I didn't know how I was going to do it, so I got a job at ESPN Zone, thinking I would meet people in the business. People give me a hard time for it, but they don't realize that they shot 'Sports Reporter' there and that folks from ESPN and ABC were in there all the time.
When my TV show, 'Sports Jobs with Junior Seau,' assigned me to be a 'Sports Illustrated' reporter for a weekend, I didn't realize I'd have to squeeze it in around another sports job. I had planned to retire from the NFL to enjoy the cushy lifestyle of a full-time reality TV star, but I wound up getting run over by a bull.
I'm the biggest sports fan there is, I love sports, but I'm still convinced that it's teachers who deserve the big salaries, not athletes.
I think one of the innate challenges that comes with being on ESPN is that it is a sports network. It is an entertainment space largely, and because of that - as should be the case - politics aren't expected to be addressed in a meaningful way at a sports network.
Outside the Olympics, there are massive discrepancies within all sports. But the positive side for me is that the Olympics are the biggest platform there is, and there's total equality across all sports.
Some of us have been told what we want our whole lives. We've been told we should want to go out for sports or not. We should want a college education or a graduate degree or a particular career. We should want to date this person and not the other.
I think women athletes who have been successful need to help other sports, those sports that are just emerging. That's what I've been thinking about and looking forward to.
A lot of people don't realize that I started my career in sports and was a sports reporter long before I was on television. I used to be an NBA reporter and an NHL reporter.
If you play college sports, it's not like you have to - the next step in your career is another sport. You don't have to go into another sport. If you play college sports, you obviously graduated with a degree.
This is sports. In sports, you win and you lose. That's the nature of sports. You can't get away from that part of it. And if you get too hung up on the losing part, then you miss the boat. The competition part, a game like that, is why you play sports. That is as good as it gets.
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