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It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.

Most importantly, you have to stay true to yourself as well as those fans who made you who you are as an athlete.

Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player.

As athletes, we're defined by what we've accomplished. Those are what most people remember and what you get paid for. But I learned more from my failures than from all of my successes put together - failures as an athlete and as a person.

The mistakes you make and lessons you learn at a young age are what gets you to an Olympic level.

I've learned a lot from my mistakes, stumbles, and losses in football.

You always learn something from mistakes.

Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

I'm at the point where you look back on your life and reflect. I've always been an unbelievable critic of me. If we lost a game, I blamed myself every night. I'm very proud of some of the things I did as an athlete, as an executive.