You know what happens to guys? There's what I call the individual time of their career, and the team time of their career. This is the team time. You don't care about all the other stuff. You just want to live in one place, and watch your kids grow up and go to the same school. You say, 'Hey, maybe I'd better play well and be a good enough guy that they keep me.'
All you have to do is play better than the other guy and things go well. If you don't play better than the other players then somebody takes your place. Now a lot of guys, in this day and time with the transient nature of the sport, as soon as the competition gets too good, they want out.
The Lord has blessed me to play this game. I'm going to try to play it as long as I can. But at the same time, I want to be able to watch my kids grow up, so I've gotten to where I'm a little more mild, and I don't take golf as seriously as I did in the earlier years of my career.
The team doctor, the team trainers, they work for the team. And I love 'em, you know. They're some good people, you know. They want to see you do good. But at the same time, they work for the team, you know. They're trying to do whatever they can to get you back on the field and make your team look good.
I shouldn't have to come out and say, 'Hey, I should be a starter again.' There's a lot of guys that say that, that shouldn't be starters. The key is to go out on the field and lead your team to show people that, 'Hey, this guy is a good guy in the locker room. He can lead a team. He did it on the field. He's shown it.'
I still want to see the Knicks do well; I do. I promise I do. That's my team. After all the stuff that happened, people say to me, 'You still like the Knicks?' Well, that's just the way it is. That's what happens when you're a kid. Your team is your team, and everything is die-hard.
Masculinity varies from time to time and place to place. But it doesn't exist just in the mind of a single guy: it is shared withthe other guys. It is a code of conduct that requires men to maintain masculine postures and attitudes (however they are defined) at all times and in all places. Masculinity includes the symbols, uniforms, chants, and plays that make this the boys' team rather than the girls' team.
Although his playing career with the Broncos took place before my time with the team, I am well aware of what Floyd Little means to this franchise, city and league. Aside from his stellar play on the field, he helped make the Broncos relevant in the NFL and strengthened the bond between this team and its fans. He has waited a long time for this honor, and I couldn't be happier for him.
The success I had as a player, or the career I had as a player, is often based on the guys you play beside, the guys you play with. Playing on the offensive line, you're only as good as your weakest guy up front. I was blessed to play with a lot of guys for a long time.
Whenever I go to a new team the jabs about being a Harvard guy are always more prevalent. This is mainly because people don't know much about me other than being the Harvard guy that did well on his Wonderlic test. The more time I spend with people, the less the Harvard stuff comes up.
Anybody who has a career is going to have to deal with a rumor in their time, or something that usually isn't true. I have a great team behind me and a family that supports me. I just care too much about my career. I have been working too long to let it slip away for something stupid.
In general, if I owned a sports team, no matter what team it was, and someone asked me, 'Hey, you won the championship. Would you go to the White House?' I'd say, hey, guys, you won the championship. You decide what you want to do.
I want to be out there playing but at the same time I know my knee won't allow me to play at my best and to keep my place in the team. I'm hindering myself more than I am helping myself for the future.
I think it's because if I have the time I take the time to sign every autograph I can after a show. I'll go out of my way when a lot of other guys wouldn't do this. Things like that create so much longevity in your career because that guy or girl you met that night will go home and talk about how cool Jeff Hardy was that night and then that makes their friends want to come out to the show next time you're in town.
You don't want to let the other team feed off your outward physical demeanor. But at the same time, you can't go out and play this game and not expect to just be angry and be competitive and be excited and have that fire in your belly.
I hate striking out, but at the same time, I'm much better at letting them go rather than, earlier in my career, worrying about it so much before the next at-bat against the guy. You grow as you play, and every year, I work to cut them down.
I even believe if you're killing a team, you shouldn't stop. You should respect your opponents enough to play 100 percent the whole time. And by the same token, if you're getting killed by the other team, you should never quit.