My parents also said, “Don’t follow money. Follow your heart and you’ll be successful.” That’s all they told me and my sisters.

Oh, my granddad was ahead of his time. He was always in favor of education. My dad and mother were too, but Granddad was very aggressive in that. You know, as he used to say, “You’ve got to fill your head with new ideas so you can use them later to improve your own status and that of the neighborhood.”

He gave me freedom at the age of 11, and told me that [I should] chase my dreams, but make sure you do not find short cuts. The path might be difficult, but don't give up, and I have simply followed his instructions. […] Every time I have done something special [and] showed my bat, it was [for] my father.

¿Es la tecnología, el machine learning y la inteligencia artificial? Sí, es verdad, pero al final la diferencia es que hacemos algo que mi mamá me decía cuando era chiquito: "Tratemos a los demás como nos gustaría que nos traten a nosotros".

It’s difficult. You really have to do it as best you can. Because your family is important too. You can’t be so totally absorbed that you are not involved in their activities as well. So, I tried to divorce the two as best I could.

No, I wanted to be sports editor of the Los Angeles Times. That was my goal.

Oh, over the years, there are so many. One would be the man — I wanted to take his job away some day — Paul Zimmerman, sports editor of the L.A. Times. Jim Murray is writing for the Times now. Red Smith. I had the honor of meeting Grantland Rice way back when I was at the University of San Francisco. When we played New York in football back in 1951. Just a lot of good sports writers became friends of mine. And I respect them a great deal.

It was a very simple thing. It was a church camp, I think. I was there about two or three days, very young, and I just remember some counselor telling us that reputation is what people think you are, and your character is what you are. So if you have a bad reputation, you might as well have a bad character, and it pays to have a good reputation and a good character.

I think it’s probably a natural, adversarial position between a commissioner in any sport and their players association, or union. I was very concerned about this problem. I wanted to be sure that we were clean, so I set up a testing program. Their union took it to arbitration, and got it softened a great deal. So now I will be criticized in the future for drug incidents, yet I was unable to execute a testing program that could stop it.

Not really on a major basis. We lost the court case when the Raiders moved, so now you have more or less free agency on the part of franchises. They move from city to city. I thought that was a loss. But I tend to discount extreme praise or extreme criticism. You just have to do what you think is right.