It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.

That's the hard part about sport: as men we haven't started to be in our prime, but as athletes we are old people. I needed support. I lost trust and did stupid things.

Incorporating science, technology, engineering, analytics and medicine to athletes' training and development not just at elite level but basing it right at the grassroots level is important.

Over the years, golf has evolved from a leisurely game of stick and ball into a competitive sport for highly skilled athletes. Players not only spend countless hours fine-tuning technique on the course, but also improving strength, stability, and endurance in the gym.

We might not make what athletes in other sports make, but we have greater longevity and we do have certain freedoms to do things they can't do. Like stay home one week and play the next week.

I'm in the perfect position. It's a sports position and a political position where I can help better the lives of athletes around the world.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

To be candid with you, free agency hurts all sports. It's great for athletes making an enormous amount of money. But to say it helps the sports, I don't believe that.

I had a great interest in sports. I had three older brothers who were great athletes. I was not.

It's long been a problem. But I'm not just talking about the UFC - I mean homophobia in sports in general and athletes sometimes say really stupid things.

I like Barack Obama as a person. He's articulate, he knows sports, his brother-in-law's a coach. He always has the athletes to the White House. But I don't know about some of his policies and some of these people in Congress.

Several professional athletes have wrongly taught many young Americans by example that the only way to succeed in sports is to take steroids.

I long for the days when athletes were revered. I want to see the romance return to sports, to see people enjoy the game purely for the game and the players.

You've got athletes who are politicians, venture capitalists, musicians, rappers, etcetera. It's becoming more of a popular thing to have other interests outside of basketball, and I think that's normal. Just like when people work day jobs, they have interest in sports, they do investments, they do all these other types of things.

So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.

At the end of the day, everything is God's plan, and he cares about what we do. He cares about our hearts, how we play the game, and how we treat people. He's definitely involved with how we handle sports and not just the outcome of it. I'm proud when athletes mention God in any way.

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story.

What if you didn't have education for sports? People with a natural inclination for sports, athletes without any kind of education, without any kind of training, they would just be couch athletes instead of the world class Olympians that we have.

Unfortunately the world is what it is now. People don't get along for whatever reason. As professional athletes, in a way we're almost ambassadors for peace, because sports brings everyone together.

Sports not only build better athletes but also better people.

These days the temptation to use steroids in sports has become too great for many young athletes.

I was a hockey player. I played hockey forever. That was my life and my job until I got injured, so I get sports, and I get the sports atmosphere, the feeling around other athletes, but I never played football.

The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children - children with mental retardation - can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.

The world of sports knows no religious, racial or political differences. Athletes, from whatever land they come, speak the same language. The lessons of competition are lessons for life.