Frank Deford
Frank Deford
Frank Defordis an American sportswriter and novelist...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 December 1938
replace
Gamesmanship has come to replace sportsmanship all too often,
audience audiences wish
I do wish we wouldn't pander to the same audience over and over again,
And that, in turn, has been superseded by, 'In your face.'
athlete men sticks
Usually when an athlete gets a reputation it sticks with him, even when he's an old man.
sports thinking together
I think at its best, sport does bring us together.
sports kids player
If the players aren't getting paid, there's something terribly, terribly wrong, and that's true only in the United States. Everywhere else, where money is involved with sport, the players get paid. But these poor kids in college, they're doing it for free, and that's just disgraceful.
simple joy sometimes
The joy sometimes is in the simple beauty.
athlete kids thinking
I don't think there are many kids who sit around and want to be actors. I don't think there are many kids who want to sit around and want to be senators. But so many of us want to be athletes, so we're envious of them and we put them up on that pedestal.
writing editors differences
I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.
growing-up mean kids
If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something.
basketball football school
I criticize the NFL in many ways, but I think it's made great strides. I think college basketball, great strides. College football means so much to alumni, doesn't it? It sort of represents the school. It's when you go back; it's at the beginning of the school year.
basketball sports football
I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism.
school thinking white
I think there are white alumni out there who wouldn't mind having an African American president of their school, but would be reluctant to have an African American coach, because he represents the school so. I think it's just sheer backward racism.
basketball athlete writing
I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."