It's going to be really weird when I'm 80 years old, in a walker, and people are still calling me America's sweetheart. We need a new one.

If I had a bad performance in a particular leotard, I threw it in the trash.

As a kid, I was a pretty good little sprinter.

In the dressing room, I always put on my right shoe first. Same thing for my right wristband.

What made it so special was the city of Houston had never won a sports championship. I think the championship changed people's thinking about their own city. It made them feel like their city had some significance that it hadn't had before.

I wanted to use sports for social change.

I could have gone down a very different path, but my parents would not let me give up football.

For a Nebraska kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nebraska football was a quasi-religion, so I ran out to get The Omaha World-Herald every morning, salivating for the sports page. My dad, however, required that I read one front page story and one editorial before I was allowed to turn to the sports.