Quotes from Jeff Pearlman

I'm not saying - in any way - that Donald Driver is lying or lacking sincerity. But I trust my reporting.

His level of sophistication didn't jive with Slam," said Tony Gervino, the magazine's editor. "He wasn't particularly cool; he was very polished. Slam was never polished. We were the opposite of polished.

Aikman, whose vocal stylings are reminiscent of a cat choking on a lug nut.

The Los Angeles coach and his assistants were befuddled by the Buss family's willingness to kneel before a child. Around the same time as he was being accused of sexual assault, Bryant started behaving in curious ways. There were the new tattoos scrolling down his right arm—a crown, his wife Vanessa's name, a halo and angel wings above Psalm XXVII.

The nightmares are that you're gonna let the winning run score on a ground ball through your legs. —BILL BUCKNER, in a TV interview before Game 1 of the 1986 World Series

Four hours and forty-two minutes after Knepper began the game by striking out Wilson, the Mets swarmed the field and swallowed Orosco. Mike Scott was named NLCS MVP. New York was going to the World Series. It was time to destroy an airplane.

I come from parents who are big on respect and also who are big on treating everyone with love. No race, no religion, no culture—none of that matters. You're a person: you deserve respect. I was in a position to make people feel good and welcome and loved. Why wouldn't I act on that?

The mythology began here. On the day. At the moment. Only nobody knew it. As the years passed and the legend grew, it became an increasingly daunting challenge to separate fact from fiction; giant from gnat. That's what happens when we anoint our heroes with nicknames and expectations and an unusual largeness generally reserved for skyscrapers and grand canyons.

As an assistant coach at Picayune High School, he helped a team that had gone 0–10 the year before…to go 0–10 again. "With all my expertise in coaching," he wrote, "we came close to winning a game.

You came to the USFL either as a marquee guy brought in to bring credibility to the league, or as a washed-up NFL reject. That was me. The reject. —Matt Braswell, center, Michigan Panthers

The Lakers regained possession with 11.3 seconds left and the score knotted at 89. During a time-out, Harris looked around the huddle and decided that the man to have the basketball in his hands would be the untested, undeserving, untrustworthy Kobe Bryant.

That's why, when West was asked during his team's playoff loss to San Antonio about the possibility of hiring Jackson, he said, curtly, "Fuck Phil Jackson." Yes, Fuck Phil Jackson.

In Dallas, the Texas Stadium toilets had frozen.

Sibilia could not get past two things: (1) that the USFL's dysfunction was the greatest culprit in the league's failings, and (2) Trump was awful. "He was extremely arrogant and I thought that he was obviously trying to play the game. He wanted an NFL franchise . . . the USFL was a cheap way in.

I will never get the hours back in my life that I spent covering the Federals, said David Remnick, the team's Washington Post beat writer. I'll be on my deathbed thinking about that.

But Cleveland sucks," Fox said—referring to both the team (which went 42-40 in 1996–97) and the city (once ranked among America's most dangerous metropolises by CBS News). "It's a lot of money," Strickland replied. "Bill," Fox said, "tell them if they wanna pay me $42 million I'll go to Cleveland. Otherwise I'm joining the Lakers." Rick Fox joined the Lakers.

Troy earned all of our respect," says Garry Cobb, the Dallas linebacker. "He got killed and refused to cry. I've been on the field when quarterbacks cry, and it ain't pretty. Dan Marino was a crier—'Whose man was that! Where's the blocking! Whah! ' But Aikman—never. Aikman was a man.