Shannon Sharpe

Shannon Sharpe (born June 26, 1968, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is a former American football player who won Super Bowl rings with the Denver Broncos (1997 and 1998) and the Baltimore Ravens (2001). Sharpe was a gifted receiving tight end and is considered one of the league’s all-time great players in that position. He later became a prominent sports commentator and media personality.

Early life and college

Sharpe was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary Viola Washington Porter, on a farm in Glennville, Georgia, along with his elder brother, Sterling, and sister, Sherra (also known as Libby), and other relatives. The family home lacked running water and indoor plumbing, and Shannon Sharpe worked on nearby tobacco and chicken farms from a young age to help make ends meet. Sharpe has frequently credited his grandmother with instilling a relentless work ethic in him, telling the Tampa Bay Times in 1998, “My grandmother used to always tell me it takes all this to make a man, and I think she would be very proud of the man I’ve become now.”

Sharpe and his brother, who is three years older, were standout athletes in high school, and both excelled on the football, track, and basketball teams. In fact, for many years Shannon Sharpe’s athletic achievements were overshadowed by those of his brother: Sterling Sharpe played Division I college football for the University of South Carolina, was drafted into the NFL in the first round, and was on track to make the Hall of Fame as a star wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers when he suffered a career-ending neck injury in his seventh year in the league.

By contrast, Shannon Sharpe initially had more modest prospects for his athletic future. He attended the Division II Savannah State College (now University), a historically Black institution. Sharpe played wide receiver and set records for yardage, touchdowns, and yards per catch. He racked up accolades, including being selected as Co-Player of the Year for the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and College Player of the Year in Georgia. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in criminal justice in 1990 and was later inducted into Savannah State’s Hall of Fame. Yet despite these achievements, NFL scouts worried that Sharpe’s size—he was later listed at 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 meters) and 228 pounds (103 kg)—made him too big to be a top professional receiver but too small for the next logical position, tight end. Reflecting this mixed evaluation, Sharpe was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the seventh round of the 1990 NFL draft, the 192nd player overall.

Success in the NFL

Sharpe had a quiet start in the first two seasons of his professional career, putting up middling numbers as a wide receiver. For the 1992 season the team’s coaching staff shifted Sharpe to the tight end position, a move that would define his career. Bucking conventional wisdom about his size, Sharpe was able to combine the speed, agility, and catching ability of a wide receiver with the blocking skills of a tight end, in the process helping to redefine the tight end as a hybrid player, equally capable of receiving as blocking. He led the Broncos in receiving during that breakout season with 53 catches for 640 yards, and he earned the first of seven consecutive Pro Bowl selections. His rise continued in 1993, during which he amassed 81 catches for 995 yards and was selected for the All-Pro first team for the first of four times.

Sharpe’s contributions—alongside those of quarterback John Elway, running back Terrell Davis, and wide receiver Rod Smith—helped make the Broncos one of the NFL’s premier offensive teams of the mid-to-late 1990s. The team’s rise culminated in back-to-back Super Bowl victories in 1997 and 1998. Sharpe gave his 1997 championship ring to his brother. Otherwise dependably healthy, Sharpe played in only five games of the 1999 season after suffering a broken collarbone. He ended the decade being named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 1990s.

Move to Baltimore and retirement in Denver

Sharpe signed with the Baltimore Ravens in 2000 as an unrestricted free agent after the Ravens offered him a significantly more lucrative contract than the Broncos were prepared to extend. Sharpe quickly returned to form following his injury and had 67 receptions for 810 yards in his first regular season on the East Coast. In the playoffs in the American Football Conference championship game, Sharpe set the NFL record for the longest reception in postseason history, catching a short pass from quarterback Trent Dilfer and running the ball 96 yards down the field. It was the Ravens’ only touchdown of the game and propelled them to the Super Bowl. There Baltimore defeated the New York Giants, and Sharpe won his third championship. In his second season with the Ravens, in 2001, Sharpe pulled in 73 receptions for 811 yards and earned his last selection to the Pro Bowl.

Sharpe returned to the Denver Broncos in 2002 and played his two final NFL seasons with the team that had first drafted him. Upon retiring in 2004 Sharpe had cemented himself as one of the league’s all-time great tight ends with 10,060 receiving yards, 815 receptions, and 62 touchdowns. At the time, this made him the league’s all-time leader in those categories for a tight end (his numbers were later overtaken by, among others, Tony Gonzalez, Travis Kelce, and Antonio Gates). Sharpe was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.

Broadcast career

Known for his outspoken, entertaining personality and broad smile, Sharpe started his sports talk career in 2004 with the CBS Sports television show The NFL Today. He contributed his analysis and opinions for NFL pregame, halftime, and postgame segments on the show until 2014. In 2016 he teamed with journalist Skip Bayless to host the live sports talk show Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, which ran for eight seasons on Fox Sports 1. Sharpe debuted the weekly podcast Club Shay Shay in 2020. In addition to speaking with fellow athletes, the show has enabled him to branch out from sports to chat with guests that have included musicians, actors, influencers, and politicians, most notably Vice Pres. Kamala Harris during her unsuccessful 2024 campaign for president.

In 2023 Sharpe boosted his media profile further by becoming a recurring guest on the popular ESPN show First Take. The following year he signed a multiyear contract with ESPN and became a regular cohost—and verbal sparring partner—with Stephen A. Smith and Molly Qerim on First Take.