My co-workers expect me to be late and temperamental.
I've actually always started with what feels most natural. Which is, the people who surround me in my daily life. So, the first show I ever wrote, which is called 'Surface Transit,' was based in part on people I knew from my family. Co-workers, ex-boyfriends. All of that kind of thing.
Jose Mourinho was a difficult coach for me, and we had a respectful but complicated relationship. When I thought he would give me a chance, I couldn't prove to him that I was in good shape.
I feel that God wants me to coach; otherwise, he wouldn't have put the desire in me.
I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that's for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn't play golf.
My mentor was Clara Ward of the famous Ward gospel singers of Philadelphia. And my dad was my coach. He coached me. And just my natural love for music is what drove me.
God's been good to me, He really has. I don't know why he picked me out... Just think about it: I virtually coached in my hometown. From the middle of the Meadowlands field, it can't be but a couple of miles. I was lucky to do that.
Mostly I want to talk positive; I wanna talk about a bunch of great kids that I coached and made me look good and the university that I've seen grow from a cow college, which it was, only 12,000 people, and when I came here, we weren't at Pennsylvania State University, we were at Penn State College.
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
When I was in the ring at the Olympics, it was my father's words that I was hearing, not the coaches'. 'I never listened to what the coaches said. I would call my father and he would give me advice from prison.
There are coaches to whom winning or losing means something close to life or death. If they lose, then their life has somehow been diminished. I'm not that way, and it keeps me steady.
Teaching players during practices was what coaching was all about to me.
Coaching wouldn't be for me. No, certainly not.
People say you have to know when to retire, which is a dumb thing to say. If you want to go out on top, yeah, it becomes important when you quit. But I wasn't afraid of that. And I wasn't worried about getting fired. I knew the risk. To me, it's not an ego thing. I enjoy coaching. I enjoy helping people achieve something.
I wanted to get my coaching badges after retiring, and I asked to take the exam, but they told me I needed to study for four years. I told them they were crazy. Who is going to study for four years? How is someone going to teach me technical things when I know more than they do?
I'm so blessed to have gone to Wisconsin. It's a great school and great coaching staff with incredible fans. I had a lot of great teammates that wanted to be successful. I played behind a huge offensive line. I think that proved a lot, too, as a 5-11 quarterback showing I could play under center with those guys in front of me.
At the same time, it makes me feel like I have to prove myself to the new guys coming in as well as prove myself to the coaching staff, which is a good bit of motivation for me.
The secret to it all is just to enjoy what you're doing. This is not working at the coal face, this is not sweeping behind a restaurant. It's work, but it's not work. It gives me a different type of energy. I'm grateful for that.
In June 2010, after more than 38 years in uniform, in the midst of commanding a 46-nation coalition in a complex war in Afghanistan, my world changed suddenly - and profoundly. An article in 'Rolling Stone' magazine depicting me, and people I admired, in a manner that felt as unfamiliar as it was unfair, ignited a firestorm.
Growing up in the Bay, I was still looking for a lot of East Coast hip-hop. I had an older homie put me on to a lot of stuff like Nas' 'Illmatic.'
