Losers are never lovable in these good sports' eyes
By BERNIE LINCIOME, Scripps Howard News Service November 16, 2003
Sports has winners. Sports has losers. Sudden-death overtime and extra innings see to that. So for all the losers out there, let's take in e wisdom of others who have lost and lived to tell about it.
"More good lessons come from the disasters than from the successes. You learn from your screw-ups." - former football coach Chuck Noll.
"Adversity makes champions." - former football coach Tom Landry.
"Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever." - cyclist Lance Armstrong.
"Every time you win, you're reborn. When you lose, you die a little." - former football coach George Allen.
"Showing up is 80 percent of life." - filmmaker Woody Allen.
"Winning is only important in war and surgery." - basketball dreamer Al McGuire.
"Winning isn't everything, it is the only thing." - former football coach Vince Lombardi.
"Do not pursue victories but human communication instead." - Chairman Mao.
"There's room at the top, but not enough to sit down." - former hockey coach Fred Shero.
"Fear of losing is what makes competition so great. Show me a gracious loser, and I'll show you a perennial loser." - former football player O.J. Simpson.
"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you an idiot." - former baseball manager Leo Durocher.
"All quitters are good losers." - former college football coach Bob Zuppke.
"There never was a champion who to himself was a good loser. There's a vast difference between a good sport and a good loser." - former football coach Red Blaik.
"I'd rather be a football coach. That way you can only lose 11 games a season." - former basketball coach Abe Lemons.
"If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out." - baseball Hall of Famer George Brett.
"Even Napoleon had his Watergate." - former baseball manager Danny Ozark.
"If the meek are going to inherit the earth, our linemen are going to be land barons." - Tampa Bay Bucs offensive coordinator Bill Muir.
"We have the sweetest, finest bunch of kids in the world, and I love every one of them, but they're not tough enough. If we don't get some sure-enough, way-down-deep meanness, we're not going to beat anybody." - Alabama legend Bear Bryant.
"There is no heavier burden than a great potential." - Linus.
"Failure is another steppingstone to greatness." - Oprah Winfrey.
"Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of worth is a tragedy." - football coach Joe Paterno.
"You might have to fight a battle more than once to win it." - Margaret Thatcher.
"No one knows what to say in the loser's room." - Former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali.
"Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." - John F. Kennedy.
"No one promises you tomorrow." - the late, great Walter Payton.
"The sun doesn't shine on the same dog every day." - former quarterback and football coach Steve Sloan.
"The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears." - writer Kurt Vonnegut.
"Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses." - George Washington.
"I give the same halftime speech over and over. It works best when my players are better than the other coach's players." - former football coach Chuck Mills.
"Class is when they run you out of town, to look like you're leading the parade." - former football coach Bill Battle.
"You don't feel the splinters on the way up, only when you start sliding back down the ladder. - former football coach Bum Phillips.
"If 'ifs and buts' were candy and nuts, wouldn't it be a merry Christmas?" - former football player and broadcaster Don Meredith.
"When that one great scorer comes to write beside your name, He writes not if you won or lost, but how you played the game." - former sportswriter Grantland Rice.
"We made too many wrong mistakes." - former baseball player and manager Yogi Berra.
"A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits." - former president Richard Nixon.
"You've tried and failed. The lesson is, never try again." - Homer Simpson.
"I coulda been a contender." - Marlon Brando.
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