by Travis Normand
November 7, 2016

This post is a little random but will serve as a collection of some of the greatest quotes (in my opinion) from college football coaches and personalities. In no particular order:

[1] In 1968, Woody Hayes’ Ohio State team won its rivalry game against Michigan by a score of 50–14. Late in the game, Ohio State held a 44–14 lead and yet still scored one final touchdown. Instead of kicking an extra point, Hayes opted for a two-point conversion (which was unsuccessful). When asked later why he went for two points, Hayes replied, “Because I couldn’t go for three!“

[2] In 1981, after the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bowie Kuhn, offered lifetime MLB passes to the returning hostages from the Iran hostage crisis, Carroll Hoff “Beano” Cook asked/said, “Haven’t they suffered enough?“

[3] In July 2015, at SEC media days, Arkansas head coach Brett Bielema was asked how it had felt ending the previous season by defeating the Texas Longhorns 31-7 in the 2014 Texas Bowl. On their final possession, Arkansas had taken three kneel-downs after a first and goal in order to run out the clock and end the game. “It was a proud moment,” said Bielema. “Borderline erotic.“

[4] As far as John Heisman  was concerned, fumbling the football was a cardinal sin. Among his many different preparation rituals, Heisman would recite the following speech to his team at the beginning of each season.  While holding up a football for all his players to see, Heisman would ask rhetorically, “What is this? It is a prolate spheroid, an elongated sphere-in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

[5] Henry Russell Sanders was the head football coach at UCLA from 1949-1957. During his tenure at UCLA he was asked about the importance of winning the UCLA-USC rivalry game. Sanders responded by saying “[I]t’s not a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that!”

Hopefully more to come….soon.