National Championships Quotes

There is not that many players that really can take over games, signed Candace Parker, I really felt like at that time that a National Championship was certainly in reach.

That's the whole goal, to win the national championship. You can't have a legacy without one.

Look, I won in high school, I won a national championship in college, I want to win one in the NBA. But winning a gold medal, I don't think anything can top that.

It’s easier to win the National Championship than the SEC, ask Nick Saban.

In 1948, I began coaching basketball at UCLA. Each hour of practice we worked very hard. Each day we worked very hard. Each week we worked very hard. Each season we worked very hard. Four fourteen years we worked very hard and didn't win a national championship. However, a national championship was won in the fifteenth year. Another in the sixteenth. And eight more in the following ten years.

It's a long, hard, difficult process to make it to a national championship.

The thing I wanted to focus on first was that I wanted to graduate, and (with me) coming back, I knew that I wanted another national championship. Another national championship is everyone's main goal, but we have to take it one game at a time. We can't get ahead of ourselves. We've got Washington first, then we'll see what happens.

I started at a 'learn to swim' scheme when I was about five-years-old. I did it to learn water safety, but it was fun and I loved the water. I went to a club, moved up through the ranks and got better and better before taking part in my first national championships.

Our dad made everything competitive for me and brother. It always was a world championship, a national championship, Big 10 championship. It was always at stake in everything we did.

I was able to do Classics, the U.S. national championships and the Pan American Games and feel like I improved with each meet, but I was still struggling with a lot of residual pain from the two surgeries.

Edwards said the greatest moment of his career was winning the national championship. The lowest moment (of my career) happens every time we lose to Utah.

Everything about my life is about winning a national championship

If short hair and good manners won football games, Army and Navy would play for the national championship every year.

To win a national championship, you've got to be a little lucky.

I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.

As good as we were, we didn’t win a National Championship until 1993, mainly because we kept losing to Miami on missed kicks. I used to get mad because nobody else would play Miami. Notre Dame would play them, then drop them. Florida dropped them. Penn State dropped them. We would play Miami and lose by one point on a missed field goal, and it would knock us out of the National Championship. I didn’t want to play them, either, but I had to play them. That’s why I said, 'When I die, They’ll say, ‘At least he played Miami.'

I can honestly say that two weeks after the national championship year, I'd forgotten about it and started laying the groundwork for spring practice. And so every year, that's been the thing that's motivated me. . . .

Actually, the Kentucky moment was better than winning the two National Championships, because it was the epitome of what I try to get from a team in a crisis situation.

Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn't give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first one.

Well, I think any national championship is an extremely important championship to play in.

If you win a National Championship, or you win two, people think you have not only seen the Holy Grail, but you've embraced it. Basically, I do what a lot of people do, but I've been able to win.

When you're are playing for the national championship, it's not a matter of life or death. Its more important than that.

Anyone who doesn't win their conference has no business playing in the national championship game.

My biggest frustration with the Heisman is it's become the MVP of the national champion, or a team going to the National Championship game. That's what it's turned into. If you're not undefeated, you're out of the running.

During my 40-year coaching career at West Point, Indiana and Texas Tech, my teams reached the Final Four on five occasions, winning the national championship three times.

Our goal as a team is to keep playing as a group for as long as we can because you will never have that team again. It is like a dying limb, you have to prune it off and let another one grow in its place. That is the way you have to do it, but it still hurts losing these guys and that team because they and you have put so much effort into building a team. Even if you win that last game (and a national championship), it hurts badly because the players know they will never have that same special group of guys together on the same team again. Somebody always goes and somebody new always comes in.

The first time I managed to pick up a basketball I knew I was destined to lead the UK to another National championship. ... Even now, so many years later, I still believe Kentucky will go undefeated in March & win everything.

So, yeah, I'm going to try to win the national championship next year. But I'm not going to kill myself doing it. I'm not going to kill my players either. You really start to realize there's a lot more to what we're trying to do then winning games

When people ask me now if I miss coaching UCLA basketball games, the national championships, the attention, the trophies, and everything that goes with them, I tell them this: I miss the practices.

Everybody on a championship team doesn't get publicity, but everyone can say he's a champion.

People want national championship banners. People want to talk about Indiana being competitive. How do we get there? We don't get there with milk and cookies.

Searching for funds to continue my skating career when I was 17, I called the Women's Sports Foundation in New York. The intern who answered the phone suggested that I might be a great candidate for the Travel and Training fund, and she sent me an application form. I applied for a grant. With the funds I was awarded, I bought a new pair of skates and a plane ticket to the 1988 National Championships, where I achieved my highest national finish. Four years later, I won the gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games.

At Alabama, our players don't win Heisman Trophies. Our teams win National Championships.

What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama.

But I was always a bit of a gypsy, anyway. I spent five years at Oklahoma State, five years at Miami and moved on after winning the national championship, and five years with the Cowboys. So, I was ready to move on. We won back-to-back Super Bowls, and I felt that I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

If the UCLA teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s were subjected to the kind of scrutiny (other schools) have been, UCLA would probably have to forfeit about eight national championships and be on probation for the next 100 years.