H.G. Bissinger Quotes

“I’m gonna party, see how intoxicated I can get and how many rules I can flaunt. That’s my motto.”

“I work not only for the gathering and assimilation of knowledge, but also to teach the fact that one can be brilliant without being arrogant, that great intellectual capacity brings great responsibility, that the quest for knowledge should never supplant the joy of learning, that one with great capacities must learn to be tolerant and appreciate those with lesser or different absolutes,”

“you’ll be all right,” said Hanson. “As long as you don’t rock the boat, then they think”

“Athletics lasts for such a short period of time. It ends for people. But while it lasts, it creates this make-believe world where normal rules don’t apply. We build this false atmosphere. When it’s over and the harsh reality sets in, that’s the real joke we play on people. . . . Everybody wants to experience that superlative moment, and being an athlete can give you that. It’s Camelot for them. But there’s even life after it.”

“This must not be planet earth,” Cone told his partner. “This must be hell.” But it wasn’t. It was just Odessa.”

“He saw the irresistible allure of high school sports, but he also saw an inevitable danger in adults’ living vicariously through their young. And he knew of no candle that burned out more quickly than that of the high school athlete.”

“Let each of you discover where your chance for greatness lies. Seize that chance and let no power on earth deter you.”

“Instead of understanding that they were the beneficiaries of history, they began to believe that they were the creators of it.”

“the solemn ritual that was attached to almost everything, made them seem like boys going off to fight a war for the benefit of someone else, unwitting sacrifices to a strange and powerful god. In”

“He firmly believed that football, like other sports, used blacks, exploited them and then spit them out once their talents as running backs or linebackers or wide receivers had been fully exhausted. For a few lucky ones, that moment might not come until they were established in the pros. For others, it might come at the end of college. For most, it would all end in high school.”

“She said also that they absolutely hated any assignment in which they had to interpret what they had read. If they had to think about anything, make critical judgments and deliberations, the cause was hopeless. The best they could be expected to do was regurgitate.”

“It was hard not to think that wherever he wound up, it was not going to be good. He drank. He drugged. He regarded life with devilish disdain. I could never see him turning it around. Which is why I have also learned that the worst predictor of future behavior is high school behavior.”