football

See Also: SPORTS

1. The ball just skittered around in the backfield like a puck on ice —Jonathan Valin
2. The ball peeled his head like an onion —Ken Stabler and Barry Stainback
3. Both players bounce up like toys —Richard Ford
4. My teammates were cringing in the huddle, like those scurvy hounds who live off garbage at county landfill projects —Pat Conroy
5. Passes faltered and tumbled like wounded ducks —James Crumley
6. Passes swerved like a diving duck —Y. A. Tittle, New York Giants quarterback, New York Times, January 12, 1987

   Tittle’s simile dates back to 1962 when his team won the playoff game for the National Football League championship.

7. Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors —Frank Gifford, Sports Illustrated, June 4, 1960
8. [Gary Anderson of the Miami Dolphins] runs like a locomotive —Craig James, Anderson’s teammate, New York Times/Sports of the Times, September 10, 1986
9. Some of them [professional players] always look like brooding Pillsbury Doughboys and some of them look wizened from the start, middle-aged and beaten down, as if they’d never known what it was like to be young —Jonathan Valin
10. To me football is like a day off. I grew up picking cotton on my daddy’s farm and nobody asked for your autograph or put your name in the paper for that —Lee Roy Jordan
11. Treated his players as if he had bought them at auction with a ring in their noses and was trying not to notice they smelled bad —Jim Murray, about football coach Paul Brown, Los Angeles Herald, 1986
12. [Football] uniforms … heavy as mattresses —Lael Tucker Wertenbaker

    See Also: CLOTHING

13. When you hit that line, it gave like a sponge, and when you tackled that big long Swede, he went down like he’d been hit by lightning —Sinclair Lewis
14. Without a network outlet, football will disappear like cigar smoke in the wind —Harvey Meyerson, summation at NFL-USFL trial, 1986