I was tempted my junior year to go out of college and forgo my eligibility. I had broken several world records. I did have a lot of people telling me that I should go pro.
When I went to college, I went to a junior college. I wanted to go to the University of Alabama but had to go to junior college first to get my GPA up. I did a half-year of junior college, then dropped out and had my daughter. College was always an opportunity to go back. But she, my daughter, was my support. I gave up everything for her.
I only had one year of eligibility and I wasn't getting many offers from other schools. I jumped on it to make a mark. That was the most wise decision I made coming out of Oklahoma junior college.
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
It wasn't until people started asking me what my plans were for the future - if I would go to college or go pro - that it really hit me what I wanted to do. I decided I wanted to go pro and try to be in Wimbledon.
One-and-done is the most damaging thing in college basketball. It brings money into the college game, because it kickstarts the bidding war. When you know a kid can't turn pro and is going to go to school for one year and then go pro, that's when you see everyone going to games and courting players.
But you know, where did the Brontes go to college? Where did George Eliot go to college? Where did Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington go? Did George Washington go to college? This idea which we now have that people ought to have these credentials is really ridiculous. Where did Homer go to college?
Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work.
It was a very long and hard decision. My dad kept telling me, 'You can always go to college, but you can't always go pro.' That made sense to me.
Pro athletes, how they go through the world is so elevated. The bubble they're in is one of entitlement. And that starts young. By the time they're in college, they've had it a lot of their life.
To me, the fundamental thing - well, I guess I see a lot of people debating in the wrong way. A lot of the debate is, should we go to the coasts, should we go to the center, should we go to the left, should we go to the right?
In spite of the fact of my dad telling me that if I did well, I could go to the military, I said, 'No, I want to go to college.'
It took me a year to make the decision to go pro and skip college and give up that.
I think people will be surprised at how fast they go next year. I do think world records will get broken next year.
In my life, I got a haircut junior year of college that was a real wash-'n-go type of situation. It was short. I had six or seven people say I looked just like Hugh Grant. And I was like, 'That's a man. So... that's not nice.'
I get the Playboy thing a lot. People assume I go out with bimbos. I couldn`t go out with bimbos if I tried! I scare them off! The women that like me are smart. So I go to the Playboy Mansion four or five times a year, but people think I go all the time.
I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.