Memorable Ray Nitschke Quotes




Without a father I got much less discipline than most boys get. Now that my mother was dead, too, I grew up without anybody giving me much direction on what to do and what not to do. I grew up with an anger seething inside me at the dirty trick that life had played on me. I had to let that anger find an outlet somewhere and so I took out my anger on the other kids.

-Ray Nitschke, Mean on Sunday

I still remember that ninety-nine yard march...we'd won the championship and I thought afterward, "Ray, this is the biggest game of your life." It didn't turn out to be.

-Ray Nitschke, on quarterbacking Proviso High to the league championship

Just call me the judge. All I do is sit on the bench.

-Ray Nitschke on playing second string his first year under Lombardi

That was probably the most brutal football game that I have ever been in. I know that it was. The weather was terrible, and the field was frozen, and the wind in Yankee Stadium was just terrible. It really was the coldest that I ever played in. The weather affected me more than the Ice Bowl game that was played in Green Bay. We had humiliated the Giants the year before, and they were playing in their own backyard, and they went after it. I was just a real tough game, the way football should be played. Playing it, and watching it now, it was the most physical game that I've ever seen.

-Ray Nitschke, on the 1962 NFL Championship Game, in The Glory of Titletown

Getting married, settling down, getting responsibility for someone beside myself, having someone to love and later adopting the children -- all those things were enough motivation for me to quit making a fool of myself.

-Ray Nitschke on getting married, Mean on Sunday

Let's play with some heart!

-Ray Nitschke in the lockerroom before Super Bowl II

I want my Maypo!

-Ray Nitschke, Maypo commercial

What does this creature look like?!

-Ray Nitschke, Miller Lite Commercial

I've enjoyed every minute of my fifteen years, well almost every minute. There is nothing I could have done with my life that I would have enjoyed more. There is only one thing I regret, looking back: I regret that it is not 1958 again, so I'd have it do over again.

-Ray Nitschke, closing words of Mean on Sunday



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