On Saturday night, former Broncos and Ravens tight end Shannon Sharpe entered the Hall of Fame with the exuberance of a child on Christmas morning, and with an encyclopedic memory of how he got there.
“The people from the Hall of Fame tell me I only have 8-10 minutes to do this,” Sharpe said as he took the podium. “No chance.”
Instead, he talked for nearly 26 minutes. It flew by.
In the video introducing Sharpe for induction, his brother Sterling explained that Shannon’s plunge to the seventh round of the 1993 draft both humbled him and replaced a sense of entitlement with competition. And that propelled Shannon toward a career that would end in Canton.
Shannon explained that he learned earliy in his rookie year that he was slated to be released, and he was advised to play hard in the next preseason game so that he could maybe impress another team.
After 12 knockdown blocks in 20 offensive plays (“I was cutting everything that moved,” Sharpe said), his name was removed from the list of guys to be cut from the team.
Shannon paid extensive tribute his family. He thanked his sister for spending so much time with their beloved grandmother as she was in ailing health. And he said that, even though he’s in the Hall of Fame, he’s still the second best player in his family, behind Sterling.
Shannon spoke at length about his grandmother, who recently died. She raised Shannon Sharpe and his siblings, and Shannon Sharpe paid tribute to her.
Sharpe became intense and passionate when describing the “five-alarm fire” that drove him to break a cycle of poverty, admitting that he neglected his own children so that he could ensure that he’d be able to provide for them.
“I know my grandmother’s proud,” he said. “I know my family’s proud.”
And Sharpe is proud.
“This is the fraternity of all fraternities,” Sharpe said.
He then thanked us all for taking up 14 minutes and 23 seconds of our time.
It was a lot longer than that -- but it seemed a lot shorter. Bravo, Shannon Sharpe.