We wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.

Sports is like rock 'n' roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions.

The main thing is healthy eating, exercise, which I do for special events, like if it's Sports Illustrated, or the swim suit catalogue for Victoria's Secret, or my own calendar that I did for the year 2000.

We coaches have to learn how to deal with that: How do I get to each one best - with a talk, with video analysis? And what sort of tone? We need our own coaches for that. The sports psychologist coaches me too.

We're not doing outrageous fashion; I make sports clothes that are relatively conservative, clothes that everyone wears.

If they asked me, I did two shifts. I did sports, I did news, because I loved it.

I wanted to use sports for social change.

Women's sports is still in its infancy. The beginning of women's sports in the United States started in 1972, with the passage of Title 9 for girls to finally get athletic scholarships.

When they take surveys of women in business, of the Fortune 500, the successful women, 80% of them, say they were in sports as a young woman.

There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.

Sports are a microcosm of society.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

Sports teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose-it teaches you about life.

The American people are sheep. They're comfortable, rich, working. It's like the Romans, they're happy with bread and their spectator sports. The Super Bowl means more to them than any right.

Despite the amazing diversity we're blessed with in this country, schools are still in large part segregated because of economic disparity. Sports are one of the few areas where kids are really given the opportunity to interact with those of different races and religions.