I studied at UC Santa Cruz before going on to do a grad program at UCLA. Santa Cruz was like an awesome hippie summer camp. I got to take a vacation from reality and hang out on beaches and in forests.
We used to play football on the levee, with no shirts on in the summer - August in New Orleans - and my skin would turn red. They'd call me Redskin, Red Apache, then it turned around to Apache Red.
My introduction to the Madonna Inn came as a young boy when we would take summer vacations to a nearby town. My dad would take us into their gift shop bathroom, which was a huge waterfall that functioned as the men's urinal. So as a kid, this was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.
The beautiful thing about the NFL season is to see a team come together after they get to know each other in the spring and summer. You then go through adversity together and see how you respond. The teams that can respond in a positive way are the teams that are going to be there in the end.
As you get older, the summer is less of a vacation and more of a training period by yourself away from the team. It's exciting for me. I felt like I've been really getting better as far as my conditioning every single season as I get older.
In college, I interned for Diane Sawyer my sophomore summer.
Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.
Queen is my all-time favorite band in history. I was an obsessive growing up after I discovered them at 10 at summer camp.
The summer before my senior year in college, I talked my way into an unpaid internship on Capitol Hill. I was able to have this stimulating resume- and network- enhancing experience because my parents could afford to keep me clothed, housed, and fed in the nation's capital for 10 weeks.