Shannon Sharpe is a former NFL player, but he’s arguably more famous now in his role as a TV pundit than he was as a Hall of Fame tight end who won three Super Bowls. The man they now call “Unc” has found tremendous success in his post-playing career, more than most former athletes could ever dream of, and Sharpe knows exactly why.
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When you’re a pro athlete, you almost have to make the sport you play your entire life. Everything has to revolve around the game, training, film sessions, practice, and physical therapy. Guys are so wrapped up in the grind of their sport that they forget about life outside of football. Sharpe hasn’t had that issue since his 2003 retirement because “football was what I did, not who I was.”
“I never struggled once I left the NFL. Because football was what I did, but it wasn’t who I was…. But that’s the biggest thing, I think sometimes, a lot of times, people’s identity is tied to the sport that they play, and they get lost, ‘who am I without it? What am I?'”
Sharpe grew up in poverty in Southern Georgia in the 1970s and 1980s. The Hall of Fame TE once quipped that his family was so poor, “A robber once broke into our house and we ended up robbing the robber.” While Sharpe is the type of guy who can joke about any hardship, that rough upbringing certainly weighed on and inspired him.
“I never lost who I was. I knew what I wanted from a very young age: I wanted my kids to not have to worry about things that I had to worry about as a kid. So how do I make that happen? I had a singular focus, a singular focus. Because I knew when it was over, it was gonna be over.”
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He was determined that his children would not go through the same things that he did. That is what pushed him, not only during his record-breaking 14 years as a pro, but in his post-playing career as well.
A lot of former NFL players have done well for themselves after they hung up their cleats for the final time. Alan Page became an associate Supreme Court justice, Charles Tillman joined the FBI, Michael Griffin and Brian Orakpo created a cupcake dynasty.
However, the most common avenue is punditry. And no former NFL player has done that better than Shannon Sharpe has. He’s become arguably one of the top two or three most sought-after voices on any sports-related topic alongside Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee. He’s even created his own show, Nightcap, as well as his own production company, Shay Shay Media.
