At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I played football, honestly, to get a scholarship.
In high school and college, I was an athlete.
I was the youngest of seven kids and I would not have been able to go to college without an athletic scholarship.
And my father didn't have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn't have black quarterbacks, and I don't think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5' 11". So I just picked baseball.
I wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast.
I wanted to play football all my life, and when I got accepted to Florida State, it was academically - it wasn't for any kind of scholarship. I kind of sat down and said, 'I'm not going to make it to the NFL. I'm not the size nor the skill.'
I went to the University of San Francisco on an athletic scholarship. I didn't study in high school. I was just there to get by and to play basketball. But a funny thing happened to me when I got to college. I got challenged by the work and the professors.
I was hell-bent on being a soccer player all through junior high and high school.
I was an all-sport athlete growing up. My dad, I think, hoped I would go to college on a scholarship.
I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.