Top 1200 National Championship Quotes & Sayings

It’s easier to win the National Championship than the SEC, ask Nick Saban.

To win a national championship, you've got to be a little lucky.

Our goal is to win the conference championship and go to the playoff and win the national championship and we recruit with that attitude.

Anyone who doesn't win their conference has no business playing in the national championship game.

When I was a kid, my big hero was the number 10 of Flamengo and not the number 10 of Santos. His name was Dida. We didn't have much knowledge about the championship in Sao Paolo or in the south of Brazil. We just knew about the championship in Rio because I am from there. But Pele played for the national team and was a hero.

Our dad made everything competitive for me and brother. It always was a world championship, a national championship, Big 10 championship. It was always at stake in everything we did.

As good as we were, we didn’t win a National Championship until 1993, mainly because we kept losing to Miami on missed kicks. I used to get mad because nobody else would play Miami. Notre Dame would play them, then drop them. Florida dropped them. Penn State dropped them. We would play Miami and lose by one point on a missed field goal, and it would knock us out of the National Championship. I didn’t want to play them, either, but I had to play them. That’s why I said, 'When I die, They’ll say, ‘At least he played Miami.'

A lot of people talk about the Fab Five, and they were wonderful, one of the best teams you'll ever see in college basketball. But the '89 team is the best one to ever play at Michigan in my opinion because they won the national championship. Winning a championship is winning a championship.

Look, I won in high school, I won a national championship in college, I want to win one in the NBA. But winning a gold medal, I don't think anything can top that.

In a country that never wins anything: in Canada, if one of our athletes so much as makes the final in a World Championship, we declare a national holiday.

No, I'm never pleased if we don't win some type of championship, meaning Big 12 or national.

The thing I wanted to focus on first was that I wanted to graduate, and (with me) coming back, I knew that I wanted another national championship. Another national championship is everyone's main goal, but we have to take it one game at a time. We can't get ahead of ourselves. We've got Washington first, then we'll see what happens.

The goal is to win a championship. Every team enters the season with the goal to win the championship, but realistically, there are five or six teams with a realistic shot at winning a championship.

I want to have a lot to do with winning a championship or bringing a championship back to the city of Philadelphia.

We are a global sport. I mean, golf is obviously played all around the world. But when you have your National Championship, of course, everybody in America is rooting for an American.

I only won one national championship.

There's no greater feeling, I would imagine, than winning a national championship in that one year and then hopefully going to the NBA.

If short hair and good manners won football games, Army and Navy would play for the national championship every year.

I think being a championship-contending team, you have to have a championship-level coach to take you over the top.

I'd been ready too, because before Olympic Games, I wasn't compete in big competition like, World Championship, like European Championship. I just competed in national competition.

In 1955-56, Saint Joseph's won the first Big Five championship, compiled a 23-6 overall record, and entered its first postseason competition ever - the National Invitation Tournament - finishing third. That season's success seemed to vault St. Joe's into the national collegiate basketball scene, and it has been there since.

When I was a kid in New York, long before saturation sports coverage, the world heavyweight championship was, with the baseball World Series, the great national event.

We get three of the Ball boys on the Lakers together, and we gonna go championship, championship, championship, championship, championship.

I wanted to win an SEC championship and a national championship. Those are the main goals.

I've always won. I've won the state championship, national championship, all that stuff.

There's three banners I want to hang - ACC regular championship, ACC tournament championship, and, of course, the national championship.

We won the national championship. We went 40-0 - the first men's or women's team in history to ever do that.

In 1948, I began coaching basketball at UCLA. Each hour of practice we worked very hard. Each day we worked very hard. Each week we worked very hard. Each season we worked very hard. Four fourteen years we worked very hard and didn't win a national championship. However, a national championship was won in the fifteenth year. Another in the sixteenth. And eight more in the following ten years.

What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama.

There is not that many players that really can take over games, signed Candace Parker, I really felt like at that time that a National Championship was certainly in reach.

Not everyone makes it to the national championship.

My defense is a criticism, but we won a national championship at Duke, so it wasn't that bad.

When I talk about a successful program, define that. It's not just winning the national championship every year because nobody can do that.

That's why I'm here at UCLA - to help them win a national championship.

Some anthems are great for sports. You've got the Russian national anthem... 'O Canada,' how wonderful is that for hockey... but I chose the Italian national song because at my first World Cup, I saw the Italians play four times, and they won all four times - they won the championship.

Somebody asked me - you know, how come it took you so long to win a national championship? And I said, 'I'm a slow learner; but you notice when I learn something, I have it down pretty good.'

When you're are playing for the national championship, it's not a matter of life or death. Its more important than that.

When you start using terms like national championship and playoffs, that's very rare air.

We just want to win the natty - the national championship - and that's starts with a team, not just one person.

When your are playing for the national championship, it's not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.

Before we can talk about a championship, we have to practice like a championship team.

I think Jarrett Lee is much better than people give him credit for. I think he's good enough to lead this team to a national championship.

During my 40-year coaching career at West Point, Indiana and Texas Tech, my teams reached the Final Four on five occasions, winning the national championship three times.

Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes.

Well, I think any national championship is an extremely important championship to play in.

I might not have a conference championship or a national championship as a head coach, but I had the recruiting factor.

It's a long, hard, difficult process to make it to a national championship.

I think the biggest thing I want to learn from Kevin Garnett, with him having a ring, is how do I become a championship player? How do I see how a championship team looks like? How do I use myself to be a championship contributor?

I've dreamed of winning a national championship and I've dreamed of being an Olympian.

I think when you have a National Championship Game, a Super Bowl, a Final Four, a World Series, I don't see why there is any reason to pick out one individual as the MVP because it is about a team winning a championship. Maybe that best explains what I believe in at the core in my work as a broadcaster.

Everything about my life is about winning a national championship

Every time we play, we want to win, that's for sure. It may be the World Championship, the Olympics, the NBA Championship or the South American Championship, but we always want to win.

I want to win a national championship; that's been my dream since I was a child.

That's the whole goal, to win the national championship. You can't have a legacy without one.

Seeing my name in the newspapers after winning the national junior championship motivated me to win more medals and I have never looked back since then.

The one I was driving for at the time, Nissan, they pulled out after they won the championship, because it was costing millions of pounds to do a national championship and ok, that might be ok when you're doing an international championship, but not for a national one.

My biggest frustration with the Heisman is it's become the MVP of the national champion, or a team going to the National Championship game. That's what it's turned into. If you're not undefeated, you're out of the running.

I know what a championship locker room looks like, what a championship team requires.

Most coaches would consider leading a team to an Olympic gold medal a capper for a pretty good year. The same goes for winning an NCAA national championship. Or a FIBA world championship. Mike Krzyzewski, head coach of the Duke Blue Devils and Team USA, led teams to each of these honors... within about 24 months.

When I went to Baylor on a basketball scholarship - and when I thought about the future as a freshman - one achievement I wanted more than any individual award was a national championship.