John Madden

“If you look at tailgating, everyone does it. It's for everyone who likes to cook outdoors. It could be a 4th of July picnic.”

“I respect coaches; I respect what good coaches do. I know that you don't learn to be a coach in an hour and a half.”

“In all the years that I've been in football - I went directly from coaching to broadcasting - I never really had a lot of experience watching it.”

“I've often said, 'If I had one drive to win a game to this day, and I had a quarterback to pick, I would pick Kenny.' Snake was a lot cooler than I was. He was a perfect quarterback and a perfect Raider. When you think about the Raiders, you think about Ken Stabler.”

“I never watched TV because I was always doing a game. I didn't have any experience to be home watching games. I didn't know how to do it. Brent Musburger and those guys could sit and watch every game and know the scores. And I was amazed and said, 'I'd like to have something like that someday.'”

“When the going gets tough, I'm not always sure what you do. I'm not saying that I know how to fix everything when the going gets tough, but I do know this: when the going goes tough, you don't quit. And you don't fold up. And you don't go in the other direction.”

“They're on the right road, but there's a long way to go on concussions, not only in the NFL, but college football, high school football and all football.”

“I'm not afraid of flying; I just fear I'm going to die. I think I'm - vulnerable. I admit it. I don't fly. I got claustrophobia. I don't go in high buildings. I don't do those things. I'm just myself, whatever that is.”

“If you go back to the history of the 'Madden' game, I was probably on the cover of it half the time. So if I was to believe there was a curse, I would also have to believe I'd been cursed. And I've never had that feeling.”

“Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to a football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the quarterback's idea.”

“Having been in football all my life as a player and a coach and having been on the sideline, I think the closer we can get to bringing people what it's like standing and watching the game on the sideline, with a better view, would be the perfect situation for television football.”

“Trip Hawkins - and this was the early 1980s - was saying there's going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they're going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.”

“Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.”

“I'd like to work with kids in special education - younger kids.”

“I think comparisons are odious.”

“To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.”

“The quarterback has to get rid of the ball quickly, so there's not a lot of time to make moves to gain separation.”

“I would never bet against Peyton Manning. You know about the age and the neck and the strength. But I had George Blanda, and as he got older, he got smarter, and he just got rid of the ball quicker. I watch Peyton, and I see George Blanda.”

“The thing that I always respected about Bruce Arians was, when he was at Pittsburgh, he let Ben Roethlisberger decide what he liked. I used to do that. You can put something in and force-feed it to a quarterback. But if he doesn't like it and have his heart in it, it's not going to be as good as when he really likes something.”

“In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.”