Life is life and there are always going to be struggles. But when you're doing the next right thing it seems to make everything a little easier, a little bit better and a lot happier.
Ryan Leaf
I was an ego maniac with a self-esteem problem and that's what most addicts are like.
When I bought my first house I had all these red flags on my credit report because I bounced a bunch of checks to places like Pizza Hut and stuff like that for $13 or $15 because I was trying to feed my O-linemen.
Every time I stepped on the practice field when I was in San Diego, I dreaded going to work. It wasn't any fun. I didn't like the people I was playing with. They didn't like me.
I was a talented egomaniac with a self-esteem problem.
People say I'm arrogant or cocky. You know what it is? I feel that I have a good chance to win ball games.
People hold me accountable. Before I would push people away, but that's not a way to be successful.
I defy anybody to be of service to another human being and not have the most peaceful night of sleep you've had in a long, long time.
There was a joke going around campus when I was at Washington State. It went, 'What's the difference between God and Ryan Leaf?' The punchline was, 'God doesn't think he's Ryan Leaf.'
I'm going to make a difference in other people's lives because who I am as a person rather than who I was as a football player.
I spent money on all the wrong things. Private airfare. Things like that.
The farther I go East in the U.S. the more I get recognized because of more sports crazy the East Coast is.
A lot of people said they prayed for me. I felt their prayers.
I do follow the NFL. It took me a while to get back into it, but I do follow it religiously now. Huge Packers and Steelers fan.
I'm actually pretty reserved.
Certainly, with my giant overinflated ego, playing in the CFL would have been like failing.
The hole I've dug for myself is very big.
I lay my head down every night with a ton of gratitude.
When I enjoyed football the most was when I wasn't getting paid.
Everybody tells me, 'You're going to be fine.' Well, I know I'm going to be fine.
I was a college coach, and I messed up. And I found a way to deal with the consequences and be better.
I had always been a quick healer.
When I came into the NFL, there were three things that were very important to me: money, power and prestige. I was powerful now because I was a famous athlete. I had prestige because I was doing what everybody wanted to do. And I had a lot of money.
Many times somebody tried to help me be constructive and I just pushed them away.
It's hard to transition out of football. Even when you're super successful, guys who have played 18 or 20 years and have won four Super Bowls, they still have difficulty with that transition. They believe they're not ever going to do anything that important again.
If you look like a ghost, you feel like a ghost.
Guys like me can put on 10-15 pounds in a week.
When people ask where I'm from, I tell them Washington, because that's where I feel the most comforted by the people.
When playing football became a job, it lost its luster for me.
You don't want to say the money changes you, but it definitely does.
About a year after I retired from playing, I decided that I wanted to getback to college, where I had the greatest time of my life, and to get involved with college football.
I lied all my life.
I think that if I was only known for who I was as a football player and only that, it just would have been a tragedy.
When I retired, I took my money from the financial planner and proceeded to present the front that everything was fine. I had to pretend I still made $5 million a year.
If you deny the fact that things are happening to you, that this is going on, whether it's negative or positive, you're just putting yourself behind the 8-ball because you're not facing it head on and dealing with it in a positive way that you've learned how to.
I didn't leave school early to sit on the bench.
There's freedom in being rigorously honest. I lied all my life.
I look back and see the integrity my dad had, but I didn't gravitate toward that. I don't see how I didn't.
I didn't know how to deal with real life issues the right way as a humble human being until I was humbled to the point of being put in a jail cell.
The third game of my career, we played Kansas City and I played as poorly as I've ever played in my life. I completed one of 15 passes and had two interceptions.
When do you realize when you're a kid that you're going to be great and everybody else doesn't understand that? I don't know. I just felt I could beat everybody.
I don't know if I was ever meant to have that flashy lifestyle.
I have a very small sample size: 2-0 to start my NFL career. Talking a lot of smack. And then I walk into Kansas City and put up the worst football game of my existence. And I've always been this brash, arrogant kind of guy.
I don't want to coach in the NFL.
I don't believe I was meant to be a professional quarterback. I was meant to have these life experiences and be an impact on others who've struggled. That's what I'm meant to do.
I had many orthopedic surgeries.
The NFL Legends Community is the epitome of service. This isn't about promoting you anymore. It's about promoting something bigger than you.
I was fighting a war on two fronts. I was fighting the best defenses in professional football and I was fighting the media. At that level you just cannot do that. You just cannot do it. I couldn't stop it, and I didn't try to stop it.
When you're talking to potential professional athletes, I really like to talk about the fact that even though you're a great athlete, that doesn't make you a good person. And if you can build that foundation first, everything else usually follows suit.
Being vulnerable is not a weakness.
