“The water cooler conversation in every job I've had is sports, it's what did you do this weekend, it's 'How are your parents doing?'”

“Sports are one of the main cultural activities on the face of the earth.”

“Honestly, I don't listen to nobody else's music but my own. It's kind of like sports to me. You don't see Kobe Bryant at a LeBron James game - he just works on his own game. And that's what I do. I only listen to me, so I can criticize and analyze and all those things.”

“In sports, teams win and individuals don't.”

“If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.”

“It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.”

“I do appreciate a woman who has a passion for sports and knows their stuff.”

“All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.”

“By the time I was 8 years old, sports had pretty much taken over my life.”

“All sports for all people.”

“I always tell people that our sports aren't that dangerous.”

“I've been involved with sports my whole life, which made clothes and makeup and handbags not that important as a kid. I just didn't care.”

“It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later.”

“I don't necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It's caring about something that's utterly meaningless.”

“Academics often discount the value of top-rated sports programs in helping to develop a campus life and in contributing to the overall success of a college or university. Like it or not, the sports programs a college or university has are the front page of that university.”

“One afternoon when I was 9, my dad told me I'd be skipping school the next day. Then we drove 12 hours from Melbourne to Sydney for the Centenary Test, a once-in-a-lifetime commemorative cricket match. It was great fun - especially for a kid who was a massive sports fan.”

“Sports are a microcosm of society.”

“When you're a child, no matter if you're doing show business or sports or school or anything, you just want to make the adults happy.”

“I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”

“The biological factors underlying race differences in sports have consequences for educational achievement, crime and sexual behavior.”

“The only thing a golfer needs is more daylight.”