If I stayed a football player my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports but I found I could have a more profound impact on people.

I played a lot of other sports at school and just one day the golf bug bit me and I started playing serious golf from when I was ten years old.

The truth is that for those 86 long years when the Red Sox went without a World Series win fans were not only in a recession but trapped in a longstanding deeply entrenched sports depression.

No matter how many years you play it's always something new and exciting. It's sports you never know what may happen.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

Sports broadcasting is very open now. In the beginning you did encounter more traditional attitudes and get comments. But I'm talking about 12 years ago.

Social cohesion was built into language long before Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter - we're tribal by nature. Tribes today aren't the same as tribes thousand of years ago: It isn't just religious tribes or ethnic tribes now: It's sports fans it's communities it's geography.

One of the most difficult things for people who have been successful in sports is adapting to the daily world where you can't get an answer from someone until 5 o'clock tomorrow. There is always an excuse. Living 40 or 50 years like that doesn't get too exciting after a while.

I started my cooking 'career' aged 15 almost 20 years ago. At the time it was quite a shock suddenly working 75 to 80 hours a week without time to play football or other sports.

The last few years I became a lot more into sports. Growing up the sports I liked were independent sports like skateboarding. I was really into skateboarding and not necessarily team televised sports.