SPORTS QUOTES

There's a lot of pious Roman Catholic iconography in the movie, although no one except the beloved executed priest ever goes into a church for purposes other than being murdered. The lads are loyal to the church in the same way fans are loyal to Da Bears. They aren't players themselves, but it's their team and don't mess with it.

When you dedicate yourself to pushing higher, you’re going to have to expect the hard times to outweigh the fun. It gets to the point where you begin to believe that if it isn’t hard, if it isn’t rough, then you aren’t giving everything you can. Yet, without any rhyme or reason, from time to time, something fun will just hit… out of nowhere. It’s that fun that keeps pulling me onward. Volleyball is fun. Every time I forget that, it comes back to remind me.

When people think about farmers, they think about people who grow things. Well, I'm a duck farmer, and what I grow is impatient waiting for some committee to recognize duck farming as an Olympic sport.

Racetracks seem to reward innocence. If babies were permitted to wager, they'd ultimately win so much money that management everywhere would bar them. NO BABIES ALLOWED, says a big sign at Hialeah. At Belmont Park, it reads, BEAT IT, BABIES.

Keyserling said that sport puts an exceptional valuation on the body. Look at how rich sports stars are, and look, by contrast, at how poor academics are. No one puts value on the mind, on intellect. It’s not held in esteem in our society. A society that worships moronic sports stars and loathes intelligent people is finished. The greatest and most powerful nation on earth is the one that assigns more value to intelligence than anything else. Sports stars don’t land men on the moon. Clever people do. Sports stars are just entertainers who are good at performing absurd, arbitrary games, with absurd, arbitrary rules, invented by bored humans, and usually involving a ball, a field and posts.