If you don't change with the times, the times are going to change you.
There's three parts to football: offense, defense, and special teams. You'd no more ignore special teams than you would offense or defense.
I have stayed active. I do keep moving. But I should start swimming more. Great exercise.
The age factor means nothing to me. I'm old enough to know my limitations and I'm young enough to exceed them.
If I had coached in high school for 60 years, I would have loved it. Getting to the top was not a goal. I welcomed the opportunities, but I just believed do the best doggone job you can, and good things will happen.
If you say you plan to retire in two or three years, you've already retired.
I'm about 75 pages into a book on poetry. I don't know if anybody wants to read it. It's on any broad variety of subjects. I walk down the street and think of a topic and jot it down and say, 'Okay, that's another one.' They go from the humorous to the serious to every topic imaginable.
People sometimes ask me to name the greatest coach in NFL history. George Halas may have set the standard, but Don Shula has won more games than anyone, and he has done it in the most competitive era. He had an incomparable ability to evaluate players, to motivate them, and to teach them the game of football.
I don't know exactly what are you supposed to do when you retire. Lie on the couch and do nothing? I didn't want to do that.
Age is inevitable. Aging isn't.
I went off to Harvard Law School for six weeks, and then I said, 'Doggone this, it's not what I want to do.' I remember when I told my dad I was leaving law school, and I wanted to go into football. He said, 'Be a good coach.'
I am going to miss Don Shula. I like him, and I admire him. I'm going to miss looking those 53 yards across the field and thinking, 'There is a coaching legend.'
Teaching is very important. The nature of your personality isn't that important. Lombardi was very extraverted, very bombastic. Landry very quiet, reserved. Both were great teachers and great coaches.
For a long time, I was an assistant in the NFL to George Allen, and George was paranoid that other teams were cheating on him... that they were offering bounties, that they were wiring our locker room, that they were putting food poisoning into the pregame meal of the other team's stars, stuff like that.
Experience should be a plus as long as it doesn't become complacency. If you say, 'We're not going to change; we didn't do it that way before,' then you've become too old.
I did a lot of studying of great writers. I read that Hemingway rewrote 'The Sun Also Rises' 39 times.
You adhere to a philosophy, but part of the philosophy I have is that I don't want to be too doggone inflexible that I miss a good player.
My father was an athlete, a great athlete, fought in the Marines in World War I. He was all sports and activity. My mother was all academics. I still have the complete works of Shakespeare that she had.
When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.
I exercise, walk a lot, and break into the occasional trot. I also lift weights three days a week, and I like to read about what makes a good diet. Overall, I do follow a healthy lifestyle.
