[HAAS]

Here is a collection of quotes from him that I found:

"Do right."

"Just one more time"

"A good story just makes you feel better."

"If you don't have the best of everything, make the best of everything you have."

"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

"The best way to win a game is not to lose it."

"I was a pretty good kid, I really didn't get into too much trouble. On one occasion, just after school, a group of boys met in the boys bathroom and somebody was rolling dice. ... I remember I stepped in and said, "My turn," and I put a dime down there and my point was 10. ... I was saying, "Come on 10, come on 10," and I looked around all of a sudden and there was nobody there. And I turned all the way around and our shop teacher, Mr. Sparks, said, "Come on, Russell." ... I learned a good lesson: Don't try to make 10."

"My dad always had a job that he really didn't relish getting up and going to every day. He said, 'Boy' --- that's all he ever called me --- he said, 'Boy, you do something that you enjoy doing.'"

"I had an opportunity (to play) at Alabama. I told them that that was what I always wanted to do and that I was coming, and when I got back home an Auburn coach was sitting on my front porch, and he said, 'Come on, we're going to Auburn.' And I said, 'I just got back from Alabama, I told them I was gonna go to school there and that's what I want to do.' And he said, 'Well you've got to take a look at Auburn.' So I said, 'OK.' We drove to Auburn, he put on a change of clothes, picked up his bag and we went to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and fished for two days. When we got back, I said, 'I've always wanted to go to Auburn.'"

"Attitude might be worth 80 percent of any athlete's makeup."

"You know what a consultant is, don't you? A consultant is a guy that knows 100 different sex positions but doesn't know a woman."

"The South, to me, is fried chicken and catfish caviar --- that's grits --- and good-looking women."

"Communication is the most important technique in teaching and in coaching, eyeball to eyeball, one on one: 'This is what we want to accomplish, and this is the way we're going to accomplish it.' Not memos, not bulletin boards or announcements, one on one."

"I had a handmade card hanging in my locker at Georgia that said, 'If I do, they will. If I don't, they won't.'"

"We lost a 3-year-old at one time, a child, and that is real pain. But time, blessed time, is the greatest healer. ... It ain't gonna quit hurting until enough time passes."

"I have very little use for cell phones ... but they seem to be free on the weekends."

"Our recruiting budget at Georgia Southern was $200 our first year. I had just left Georgia, whose recruiting budget was a quarter of a million dollars. And as I drove down the Woodpecker Trail, trying to touch base with people in Claxton and Alma and Jesup and Ludowici, sometimes I wondered, "What have you done?'"

"In the interest of economy, we had plain white pants, we had plain navy-blue shirts, a number on the front and a number on the back. We couldn't even put a stripe down the middle of our helmets. We used a strip of tape. ... Those kind of things screamed, 'Team'."

"I wouldn't allow them to put names on the back of our jerseys. We had to sell programs."

"The 1980 season at Georgia, I came out of the dormitory where we ate our pregame meal. I looked down and there was a dime on the ground. I picked it up, put it in my left shoe. I was wearing saddle Oxfords, which I did all the time anyway, and we beat Clemson that day, maybe it was the second or third game of the season. I taped the dime in my shoe so I wouldn't lose it, and made sure that I wore it throughout the season. We were 12-0 and won the national championship, and I'm sure the dime did it."

"We had a president that came to Georgia Southern and during one of our booster luncheons to kick off the football season --- he's the new president, his name was Nick Henry. ... He got up before the group and said, 'It's so nice to be at a college that's not on probation.' He said, 'I taught at Georgia, they were on probation. I went to Arizona State, they were on probation.' ... I followed him with my remarks and I said, 'Dr. Henry, you don't have to worry about Georgia Southern cheating. Because it takes money to cheat, and we don't have any money.'"

"I haven't been very smart, but what I have been is lucky. Somebody asked me about the last year that I coached at Southern, 'What would I like for people to say about me after I'm gone?' And I told them, "I would like for them to say, 'He was the luckiest S.O.B. that I've ever seen.' " And I have been that. Smart? No. No way."

"As a young coach, I ran with the players. As a 55-year-old coach, I jogged with the players. As an old coach of 60, 64, 65, I had to start woggin'. A wog is a little bit faster than a walk, but slower than a jog."

"I think most golfers would just about swap their front-row seat in hell for 30 more yards off the tee."

"People ask me, 'Do you miss coaching?' And my reply is, 'Every day that rolls around.'"

"Fame wasn't important. I didn't even know it existed. I saw my name in the paper and my picture in the paper a lot, but I felt like I could overcome that."

"A good sense of humor even helps in football."

"We played the Florida State junior varsity, the Ft. Benning Doughboys and Magnum Force. ... Their cheerleaders looked like meter maids." - On GSU's schedule early on. He said the Magnum Force was composed of Jacksonville, Fla., policemen.

"Emotionally, our players are just as tough as theirs. It's more physical than anything. Their players are taller. We've both got 260-pound linemen. But the ones at Georgia are 6-5, while the ones at Georgia Southern are 5-10. ... We've got a bus that, conservatively speaking, has about five million miles on it," - On the differences between major college football and I-AA.

"I've been bald so long I really don't remember when I had any hair. I know I didn't have any when I coached at Auburn in 1958. I had a thin crop when I played for Auburn (1946-49). That's it. When I went to Auburn to coach, I had fringe hair, the kind some men part down low and comb across their heads to cover up the bare spots. Haircuts went up to $1 about then. I wasn't about to pay anybody a dollar to cut what was already falling out, so I got me a razor." - On going bald.

"Why would you stay in this room with this potential killer, cocaine, and then leave when a snake comes in? I want you to promise me that if anybody ever brings that white stuff into the room where you are, you'll leave the way you did just now." - In his famous meeting where he brought in a live rattlesnake and watched his players scattered in fear.

"That's overworked. Heck, once you get a few scabs on the forehead, they're bound to bleed some when popped open. I've quit that, anyway, because I've got to uphold the image of a head coach." - On the blood that trickled down after he'd head-butt his linemen before games at Georgia.

"Here's Tennessee-Chattanooga, obviously a very good football team, beat the top (Division I-AA) team in the country two weeks ago. They've been playing football 100 years and we've been playing 2. That's why I think it's ridiculous." - On a No. 17 ranking back in 1984, the week GSU was to play No. 20 Tennessee-Chattanooga, a motivaton he did not want UTC to have.

"They'd just as soon be old Georgia Southern, in plain white pants, Navy blue shirts without any trimming and just play football." - On his team's reaction to that ranking.

"In football, like in life, you've got to do what you've got to do to get the job done. I've always believed that. Football is still football, it's a game of tackling and blocking and competitive people. Every time I told a joke or told a story or pulled a stunt, there had to be a moral behind it." - at an Augusta speaking engagement in 1998

"I told myself that golf was not a sport and shouldn't even be on the sports page. On the other hand, I said when my body falls completely apart and I couldn't do anything else, I'd give it a try. So the first of the year I gave it a try, and it's got me hooked. And I mean that, literally, because everything I hit hooks." -On his new hobby after retiring from Georgia Southern.


"My first 31 years in this business were like a guy eating at a buffet table. Later, when I came here to Georgia Southern, it was like eating the desert." - Reflecting on his career in 1998