Twenty to 30 inches. That’s the space this column fills.

It’s a lot when you know the average attention span of a reader is that of a 7-year-old with 12 cappuccinos running through his blood.

But sports pages are never bereft of the line that glues eyes.

What follows are sports greatest one-liners.

Some are from athletes. Some, sportswriters. Some, broadcasters. Some are funny. Some are lyrical. Some are both.

Some are truthful. Some are pretentious. Some are longer than one line.

1974. Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray on holding a Muhammad Ali title fight in the Congo: “Arthur Brisbane once said of a title fight, `A gorilla could lick both of them.’ Unless they post guards at the gate of Kinshasa, we may find out.”

NBA’s Charles Barkley, being asked if he had any regrets on throwing a guy out of an Orlando bar window: “I regret we weren’t on a higher floor.”

1967. ABC’s Howard Cosell on his competition: “There’s one thing about this business: There is no place in it for talent. That’s why I don’t belong. I lack sufficient mediocrity.”

1967. Sports Illustrated’s Myron Cope in response to Cosell: “Howard W. Cosell, middle-aged and tiring, must stand against the tidal wave of mediocrity, armed only with his brilliance and integrity.”

Baseball’s Yogi Berra on life: “When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”

1982. Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford on Bobby Knight’s lone dimple on his left side: “Visualize him standing in line … when they were handing out dimples … `What the bleep is this?’ says little Bobby … Bobby has no time for this extraneous crap with dimples. He’s already way down the line, taking extras on bile.”

1988. Chicago Tribune’s Mike Royko on 1946, the first year after the Cubs last World Series’ appearance: “[It is] a year that is known as The Beginning of Darkness.”

1951. New York Herald Tribune’s Red Smith on New York Giants Bobby Thomson’s ninth inning pennant-clinching home run (also called The Shot Heard Round the World): “The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”

1975. Muhammad Ali, after his third bout with Joe Frazier (It was called after the 14th because Frazier couldn’t see.): “It was like death. Closest thing to dyin’ that I know of.”

1955. Novelist William Faulkner on the Kentucky Derby: “Even before we reach the track we hear the horses – the light hard rapid thud of hooves mounting to crescendo and already fading rapidly out.”

1965. Sports Illustrated’s Dan Jenkins on Cecil the Parachute, a hack in his childhood foursome: “He would attack the ball with a whining, leaping, half turn – more of a calisthenic than a swing.”

World welterweight and five-time middleweight champion Sugar Ray Robinson on boxing: “I ain’t never liked violence.”

1979. Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray on what he’d still like to see after going blind: “I’d like to see Roberto Clemente with the ball and a guy trying to go from first to third.”

1992. Olympian Charles Barkley on throwing an elbow at an Angolian: “Well, he might have pulled a spear on me.”

2001. St. Louis Cardinals’ play-by-play man Jack Buck on having Parkinson’s, diabetes, a pacemaker, cataracts, and vertigo: “I wish I get Alzheimer’s. Then I could forget all the other stuff.”

2000. Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly, on writing a column filled with athletes quotes: “It makes for a very easy column.”

Paul Kix is a junior in journalism and mass communications from Hubbard