Troy Aikman quotes: the QB turned commentator tells it like it is.
“Go in with eyes wide open and recognize there will be a lot of hard work involved. But… anticipate having success.”
“I believe success is achieved by acquiring and developing talented, respected and credible individuals.”
“Working with someone who’s got your best interest at heart can make all the difference.”
“Winning is hard. Repeating is harder.”
“To say, ‘I don’t worry about perception,’ you better worry about perception because it’s a big part of making it through some very difficult times.”
“Most people assume you change with success.”
“Things are never as good as you think they are or ever as bad as you think they are.”
“Just remember that nothing is as bad as it seems and nothing is as good as it sometimes appears.”
“Football is a tough game. It’s a tough game for tough people. I handled myself as a quarterback in the manner I thought necessary. As a quarterback, your job is to move the football and win games, to be a leader on the field.”
“I’ve always viewed myself as an achiever. I need to achieve for myself.”
“I played it to win championships and win as many games as I could. I feel like I did it as well as anybody that’s played the game.”
“Most of the pressure, if not all, is self-imposed.”
“I’ve never gotten into anything that I didn’t feel I’d be successful doing.”
“What I am is a direct result of how I was raised.”
“As a kid, I used to practice my signature, working on the way I wanted to sign my autograph.”
“I’m not a guy who needs the spotlight. It’s not something I have to have. I’m content to sit at home.”
“I don’t try to please anybody. I try to win.”
“I have a real hard time classifying anything as my biggest moment, my favorite color or whatever.”
“I am not too open of a person. I don’t really understand why someone holding a notepad and pen thinks he can ask me anything and then is offended when I don’t answer.”
“What I plan to do is write inspirational books for children about my career—the kind of books about sports stars I once read as a boy. My first kids’ book, Things Change, which came out in 1995 and has sold 250,000 copies, exhorts the young readers to have ‘big dreams’ and to turn ‘defeats into victory.'”
“I’ll never forget when I was 12 years old. I couldn’t wait until the day I was 16 and could drive a car. I thought that’d be the end of life’s problems. I mean, you can drive! What is there left? And then I turned 16 and realized there were still problems. Here I was at the top of professional football, and I found myself thinking, ‘Now what? Now what?’ Well, isn’t that what it’s all about? To keep raising the bar for yourself?”
“I’ve always known that the lows have been lower for me than the highs have been high.”
“Look, I know that my style isn’t for everybody. There’s a reason why there’s Baskin Robbins with 31 flavors: everyone likes something different. I’m just trying to stay in my lane and do what I do best. I’m not trying to be anyone else.”
“I’m constantly just trying to improve myself. What I learned very early in my playing career was that I needed to go back and watch the games to critique with a really critical ear, my own performance. So, I would go back and listen to the games to try to figure out for myself: Did that work? Why did that work? Did that sequence work? What did I not like about that? I take that mentality into every role in life, including broadcasting, as well.”
“I think there was a time in the broadcasting business that because of the success of former football coach and sportscaster John Madden, everyone tried to be him and have his personality and persona and inflections and mannerisms. I don’t think that works in this field, or in life. I just try to be as honest as I can… and keep it as simple as possible, where everyone understands it without dumbing it down.”
“I don’t know if I want to be 65 or 67, still broadcasting games. But, why not? What else are you going to do?”
“Broadcasting keeps you relevant. The one and biggest difference now is that I don’t throw interceptions anymore. I think when I retired, a lot of people forgot—Cowboys fans did anyway—that I ever threw an interception. Now I do throw interceptions from time to time in broadcasting; I’m far from perfect. But when you walk away from the game, any frustrations you had as a player, those are all forgotten, and you only remember the good times. I think that broadcasting, for lack of a better way of saying it, has kept me relevant and in the public eye. It’s kept me out there in a way that people tend to remember my playing career more than I otherwise would, since I am out there weekly in front of the public. It’s allowed me to still get involved with other companies and do things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise been asked to do.”
“In football, there’s a contest every week and every week you know if what you did for the previous six days was enough. There’s an immediate awareness and feedback. In business, the results don’t always happen as quickly, which can be frustrating. But I’ve always believed that in business, if you have good people who work toward the common team and goal, then you’ll have success. Like in football.”
“How I’ve changed is that I’ve just gotten a better sense of what’s important to me. My daughters, my wife, my two stepsons; those are the things that matter most to me. The rest of it is just kind of window dressing.”
“When I’m lying there towards the end of my time on earth, if my girls say, ‘He was a great dad,’ then none of the other stuff really matters to me. I spent my whole childhood living out my dreams, but what really matters to me is my girls saying that I was a great dad to them. That would be enough for me. I wouldn’t need anything else.”
“Professionally, I just want the guys that I played with to remember me as a great teammate; that they respected me as a competitor. I don’t have gaudy stats, and some people ask, ‘How did he really contribute?’ But I know who I played with, the teammates and coaches, and it’s their respect that matters to me. But when it’s all said and done, whether it’s my daughters, my wife, my sisters or my friends, they’re the ones who know me best. They’re the ones who really tell my story.”
“My career unfolded in a way that exceeded all expectations and I am grateful to those who helped me along the way and shared in that success.”
“It’s who you get to share life with, not the actual experiences, that makes living so worthwhile.”
