Absolutely everything undergoes evolvement - whether it's technology, journalism, the NFL, medicine.
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.
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.
Chronological age is only an approximation of your functional age.
Whenever I think of baseball, the first name that comes to mind is Babe Ruth. What the Babe was to baseball, Shula is to football coaching. There are certain figures in sports who are larger than the games they play or coach, and Don Shula is one of those.
I was enamored with Charles Dickens as a kid, and his names blew me away.
Did I ever think at the time, when I was with the Alouettes and the Chicago Blitz, that I would be head-coaching a team in the Super Bowl? It would be hard to believe. Is it a dream come true? Yes.
I never have suspected or sensed a whiff of cheating in any of our Super Bowls.
In Buffalo, you can't imagine how much people revere Fred Jackson because of his high character, his community involvement, coming from a Division III school.
Bill Polian and I agreed when we first came together with the Buffalo Bills that we'd bring players only of high character to the team.
When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.
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.
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.
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.
If there's age discrimination - and there may be - I've always felt that the person who discriminates is hurt more than the person being discriminated against, if the second person shucks it off and moves forward.
My father Sam, by his lifelong example, displayed for me the virtues of an honest day's work and of great personal courage.
I've always been entranced by writing.
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.
The age factor means nothing to me. I'm old enough to know my limitations and I'm young enough to exceed them.
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.
