Sometimes, athletes and "stars" say some things that make you scratch your head and wonder why they said it. Here's a look at some recent quotes by Serena Williams, Sean Salisbury, and Fritz Pollard, and some analysis of "what they said, what they meant."

 Serena Williams:  "When you're down, people sometimes try to kick you," she said. "It's like people get pleasure out of talking bad. You don't just knock someone so hard when they're trying just to make it. No one knows what I went through off the court. No one knows anything that I've been through."

Dr. Lustberg's analysis: I am angry and annoyed with the public who does not know anything about me or the struggles I have been through. The public gets psychological enjoyment out of taking stars (me) down. I would like a little more understanding.

I think that people are jealous and filled with envy of others. It makes them feel better to take stars down. They build them up and then take them down to fulfill their won emotional needs. Williams needs to decide if she wants to be a tennis star, movie star, clothing designer or whatever else she wants to be. You cannot do all of them well at once as she has found out.

Serena Williams: I love doubters," she said. "You know, I have a lot of people even close to me who doubt. I love doubters. More than anything, what I love, besides obviously winning, is proving people wrong."

Dr. Lustberg's analysis: If you need to prove people wrong to generate mental energy, then you lack fire from within. What does it mean what other people say if you are secure in your own abilities? Proving people wrong can only carry you so far. Knowing yourself and what you are and want carries you a lot further in the long run.

Williams won the Australian Open. Her athleticism and charisma are not to be questioned. Along with her sister Venus, the Williams sisters have brought a much needed lift to the sport. That is why Serena receives so much coverage.

Sean Salisbury

There's nothing comical to Sean Salisbury about what he did or did not say in talking about NFL star Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday on ESPN. Describing Manning's cool against the New England Patriots, Salisbury says the quarterback was thinking, "We'll nip, we'll tuck, we'll go, we'll crunch" -- and then, according to his recollection, "we'll chew."

"OK, "chew" seems nonsensical, even for TV sports talk -- "moo" would have made about as much sense. But Salisbury isn't worried about incoherence. He feels embattled -- "it borders on ridiculous" -- by an online chorus accusing him of saying "Jew" not "chew."

Saying "Jew" in that context makes even less sense than "moo" -- or even "stew." But the ex-NFL quarterback says that's irrelevant: "I'm not apologizing for anything because I never said anything but 'chew.'"

Good for Salisbury!

We are just becoming more and more of a hypocritical society. We are just looking for anything to bring down anyone, and it speaks to our angers, frustrations and jealousies.

Serena Williams knows this. She is just having difficulty accepting it. We just think we can vent onto others without any limits.

Salisbury, if you watch him at all, is just into and about football. Beyond all this is the fact that it is fine when WE say or do it, but when others do it, look out!

We have affairs, we look at pornography (the most visited sites on the internet), but if a television movie star, or sports star does it -- tolerable. Politicians, they cannot be like us at all if they want to govern.

Racisim and the Super Bowl

"With George Halas, as great as he was," Fritz Pollard III says, "he did so much to try to keep African-Americans out of the league. Here, Lovie Smith leads his team to the Super Bowl. But it was a different age."

Hard to know if the above quote is true or not. However, either way I have found that racism or discrimination of any kind is based upon ignorance and socio-economic status. Minorities have also long been targets for the frustrations and angers of others. Things are not as different as they should be.

The one thing that bothers me is that the African American middle and upper classes do not speak out frequently enough about what has to be done to improve the lot of the "have nots." I think Bill Cosby has done a fantastic job of doing just this, I recommend you find his current material on these issues.

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http://media.libsyn.com/media/psychologyofsports/PsychologyofSportsShow14.mp3