Don't walk through life just playing football. Don't walk through life just being an athlete. Athletics will fade. Character and integrity and really making an impact on someone's life, that's the ultimate vision, that's the ultimate goal - bottom line.
Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate success for an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Sports shoes don't win races. Athletes do.
I wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast.
When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something that you want to accomplish. Whether it's make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who's in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you're investing your time in that.
An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.
I like to push characters to extremes so they have to make really tough decisions and there is no life more extreme than that of an athlete.
An athlete who tells you the training is always easy and always fun simply hasn't been there. Goals can be elusive which makes the difficult journey all the more rewarding.
At the end of the day, if you're a professional athlete in track and field you are the CEO of your company.
There aren't too many principles of proper business conduct with which just about everybody will agree. Two come to mind: 1. Unless you're a professional athlete, don't offer co-workers encouragement by patting them on the butt, and 2. Don't burn bridges.
I think every athlete has their window of opportunity, and you just have to jump on it. You never know when it can end. So I'm just trying to live large while I have the opportunity.