I always idolized guys like Deion Sanders, Barry Sanders, Steve Young and the entire 49ers team, really. I was a huge 49ers fan growing up.

I want the Saints to be one of those teams where when other teams see us on the schedule, they know they're in for one hell of a game.

When you join the NFL, you start from scratch. As long as I've been playing - which has been since I was eight years old - the game becomes harder at every level. Little league, high school, college - they're different stages you have to go through, and professional sport is completely different again.

I've always been a big PlayStation fan. Even when the Xbox first came out, I stuck with the PlayStation. I think it's because when the Xbox first came out, the controller was so different that you just automatically assumed that it was harder to play, and I always just stuck with that notion.

Most of the time, you're just trying to be the point guard out there based on the play call and the defense that you're getting; that really dictates where the football goes.

We used to flock to watch gladiators, public torture and executions. In more recent times, our appetite for mortal violence has been sublimated in sports, photorealistic video games, film and literature.

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

If you can miss getting up in the morning and running into a wall, I miss playing football. I'll never be a frustrated athlete.