American football

American football, referred to as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, which is the team controlling the oval-shaped football, attempts to advance down the field by running with or passing the ball, while the defense, which is the team without control of the ball, aims to stop the offense's advance and aims to take control of the ball for themselves.

I was tremendously honored to make the All-American team but I don't feel that I have to strain to live up to some mythical something. Yesterday's sports hero is a lot like yesterday's newspaper--you always know there's a fresh one coming tomorrow. ~ Bill Dudley

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Quotes

We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time. ~ Vince Lombardi

Football doesn't build character. It eliminates weak ones. ~ Darrell Royal

C

• In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness. In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.
  • George Carlin, "Baseball and Football"

• Iowa and Minnesota play for a pig, a statuette rendition of the actual brother of a porcine star of a Will Rogers movie. I would like to remind you that this is, on balance, a marvelous nation.
  • Chuck Culpepper, "JUST FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL TO PASADENA", (16 November 2001), The Oregonian

D

• I was tremendously honored to make the All-American team but I don't feel that I have to strain to live up to some mythical something. Yesterday's sports hero is a lot like yesterday's newspaper--you always know there's a fresh one coming tomorrow.
  • Bill Dudley, [1]

H

• I’m like a lot of coaches. I have a lot of corny saying, but one of them is "there are two types of class, there’s first class and there’s no class."
  • Dan Hawkins, [2]

L

• A game that requires the constant conjuring of animosity.
  • Vince Lombardi, as quoted in The New York Times (10 December 1967)

• We shall play every game to the hilt with every ounce of fiber we have in our bodies.
  • Vince Lombardi, as quoted in Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), by Donald T. Phillips, p. 16

• Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.
  • Vince Lombardi, as quoted in Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), by Donald T. Phillips, p. 23

• Leadership rests not only upon ability but upon commitment and upon loyalty and upon pride and upon followers...Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all the needed talents to go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.
  • Vince Lombardi, as quoted in Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), by Donald T. Phillips, p. 180

M

• In football the quarterback yells out, "Hut-hut" while he reaches in another grown man's ass. Grabs on his nuts, but just what if it was never meant, it was just an accident?
  • Marshall B. Mathers, "Rain Man" (2004), Encore

• Baseball is still a sport. Professional football is a cult. A whole way of life and values has grown up around it and its demands are heavy. To forego the exhibition games is to fail a loyalty test. Not to possess Redskins season tickets spells a fatal absence of status, only slightly less damaging than never being seen in the owner's box. Nobody keeps score on you at a baseball game. Come or don't come, it's up to you. You don't have to go to a clinic or a brunch or a post-game celebration or wake. You can be a Red Sox fan and still be a free American. Baseball is what we used to be. Football is what we have become.
  • Mary McGrory, "Deliver Us From Football," The Chicago Tribune (October 13, 1975)

R

• Several women have kicked for major college teams, including Katie Hnida at Colorado and New Mexico, and April Goss at Kent State, but none received scholarships to come to school.
  • Adam Rittenberg, "Bethany College offers scholarship to free safety Antoinette Harris", ESPN (18 January 2018)

• Football doesn't build character. It eliminates weak ones.
  • Darrell Royal, [3]

S

• Football is a team sport, and there is no one individual who is bigger than the next person.
  • Emmitt Smith, as quoted in "Self-Doubt Will Never Plague Dallas' Smith" (26 January 1994), by Fred Mitchell, Chicago Tribune, Illinois, p. Sports: 2

T

• When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
  • John Thomas, as quoted in the Corpus Christi Times (15 September 1953); as cited in "origin of 'when the going gets tough, the tough get(s) going'" Word Histories (02 Jaunuary 2019)

Y

• My mom said "you are either going to be in jail, or be killed". So I decided to do something different because I didn't want to be in one of those postions, so I kind of focused on football and took off from there.
  • Vince Young, (University of Texas at Austin) quarterback; on the "negative things" that were going on when he was growing up [4]

External links

• Encyclopedic article on American football on Wikipedia
• Official website