Shannon Sharpe is a retired American football tight end who was born on June 26, 1968. He was a member of the National Football League’s (NFL) Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens, and he was a former CBS Sports analyst on NFL telecasts. He has recently started working as a TV host, co-hosting Skip and Shannon: Undisputed with Skip Bayless.
He was also inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. On August 6, 2011, this incident occurred. He played 12 seasons for the Broncos and two seasons for the Ravens. He also won three Super Bowls and retired as the NFL’s all-time leader in receptions, receiving yards, and touchdowns by a tight end. He was the first tight end in history to have over 10,000 receiving yards. On the football field, he has made numerous contributions. Here are 100 Shannon Sharpe quotes.
“I’m a big fan of cardio. I enjoy spinning and do it seven to eight times per week because I have the time. What else can I possibly do? I don’t have a pastime. I don’t golf, I don’t restore cars, and I don’t have a fixer-upper house in the works. So, basically, my day revolves around working out. That’s what I like to do.” Shannon Sharpe’s
“There is a reason they called it chasing your dreams and not walking after them.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I WAS A TERRIBLE STUDENT. I DIDN’T GRADUATE MAGNA CUM LAUDE: I GRADUATED ‘THANK YOU, LAWDY!’”― SHANNON SHARPE
“Everybody has an ego, and they don’t like their athletic ability to be questioned.”― Shannon Sharpe
“No matter what I do, unless I break his records, I’m still going to be Sterling’s little brother.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I had a speech class in elementary school. And you know how teachers, when a kid is struggling to pronounce a word, used to lead him and say, ‘Johnny, sounds like… ? Johnny, sounds like… ?’ I said out loud, ‘Sounds like Johnny can’t read.’ Teacher told me to leave the room.”― Shannon Sharpe
“What I tell people all the time is that bodies are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. You cannot exercise a bad diet. It’s just impossible. Unless you want to be the ultra-marathoner or someone like a Michael Phelps that’s swimming 70 or 80,000 meters in a week, you cannot exercise a bad diet.”― Shannon Sharpe
“The thing you can’t measure is someone’s heart, someone’s desire. You can measure a 40, his vertical, his bench press, and that might let you know things like, yeah, he can jump high. But desire, his dedication, his determination, that’s something you can’t measure. That’s something you can’t measure about Rod Smith.”― Shannon Sharpe
“At some point in time, we’re going to have to stop addressing the kneeling, and we’re going to have to start addressing what led Colin Kaepernick to kneel. That’s the issue that nobody wants to talk about.”― Shannon Sharpe
10th of 100 Sharpe Quotes
Table of Contents
“MY GRANDMOTHER WAS A VERY SIMPLE WOMAN. SHE DIDN’T WANT A WHOLE LOT. MY GRANDMOTHER WANTED TO GO TO CHURCH AND SUNDAY SCHOOL EVERY SUNDAY. SHE WANTED TO BE IN BIBLE STUDY EVERY WEDNESDAY. THE OTHER DAYS, SHE WANTED TO BE ON A FISHING CREEK.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“You’re only great if you win. I mean, Alexander wasn’t Alexander the Mediocre or Alexander the Average. He was Alexander the Great, and there’s a reason for it.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Most people, they’re dug in. ‘Michael Jordan is the best player, and there’s nothing LeBron can do.’ A lot of people dug in that LeBron is whiny and he complains, he jumped teams, he wants all the best players. And once you have your mind made up on a particular topic, there’s no moving you off of that.”― Shannon Sharpe
“When I left my grandmother’s home in 1986 headed to Savannah State with two brown grocery bags filled with my belongings, nothing was going to keep me from realizing my dreams.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Didn’t know until my rookie year you could buy chicken parts separate, like drumsticks and thighs and breast. My granny always bought the whole chicken and cut it up.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I THINK WITH LEAN CUTS OF CHICKEN AND BEEF, FISH, TURKEY, GROUND BEEF AND BISON, YOU CAN’T GO WRONG WITH THOSE.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“A lot of people mistake habit for hard work. Doing something over and over again is not working hard.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Racism is a disease. Go to your doctor with an ailment, and let the doctor tell you, ‘Well, look, I’m not going to treat you; we’re just not going to talk about it. It’s going to go away.’ You would look at him like he’s crazy. By not talking about racism, it’s not going to go away.”― Shannon Sharpe
“You sacrifice so much to get to the NFL. You miss recitals and graduations. Moments that you can’t have because you’re focused on being the best.”― Shannon Sharpe
“My grandma told me, don’t get into trouble. I know how hard she worked to take care of her own nine kids and my mama’s three. And I just never wanted to hurt her. I never wanted to do something that would embarrass her.”― Shannon Sharpe
20th of 100 Shannon Quotes
“I TELL PEOPLE, WHEN I TRAIN, I DON’T DO A HANSEL AND GRETEL WORKOUT. I DON’T DROP BREADCRUMBS. I SAVED NOTHING FOR THE TRIP HOME.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“The only thing I do is say what everyone else is thinking but doesn’t have the guts to say.”― Shannon Sharpe
“You can get in front of the media and say, ‘Yeah, I’m working hard.’ You can’t do it in front of those other 52 guys in the locker room. You can’t fool your teammates, because they see you. They see you every day, and they see you more than your family sees you.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Super Bowl XXXII was a victory made long before stepping on that field in San Diego in 1998. It was earned with my brother guiding me as a kid in Glennville, Ga., and as a seventh-round pick out of Savannah State. Even at the pinnacle, that ring was always his.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’ve said numerous times the hardest job in America isn’t being a professional athlete. It’s not being a matador or having some job that puts your life at risk. The hardest job in America is being black, because it’s the one thing you can’t outrun.”― Shannon Sharpe
“No one in my family graduated from college until my brother did, and then I did.”― Shannon Sharpe
“If you want to boo, I want you to boo me as loud as you can, because I think that’s a sign of respect: You don’t boo the bad players; you boo the really good ones.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Colin Kaepernick had a… maybe he had an epiphany. Maybe he had a realization that ‘I have a higher calling the playing quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.’”― Shannon Sharpe
“You can tell the truth, but sometimes you can’t always be in your face with it. I found a way to tell the truth and put it in a nice, neat package for people to receive it. A lot of times, you have to put it in a nice, neat box with a bow tie, and when they open it, it’s the truth. I think people respect that.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I am the only player who has been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and am the second-best player in my family.”― Shannon Sharpe
30th of 100 Shannon Quotes
“DON’T HOPE SOMEONE GIVES YOU AN OPPORTUNITY: CREATE ONE FOR YOURSELF.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“I’m not trying to have no surgeries because I’m trying to impress somebody and I end up hurting or tearing my labrum or rotator cuff.”― Shannon Sharpe
“To say someone is the greatest, I just don’t want championships to define that greatness. Because under that theory, Robert Horry is one of the five or six best basketball players ever – he has seven championship rings. We know that not to be true.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Some people retire and play golf. Some people hunt. Some people fish. I work out.”― Shannon Sharpe
“You just don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I’m going to be a talker. I’m going to be a braggart.’ It’s something you achieve over the years, and you get better at it. Obviously, I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”― Shannon Sharpe
“You have to do more than the coaches ask you, or you’ll never be a great player in this league.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I was always a talker. You just don’t wake up one morning and say, I think I want to talk a little more.’ Some are better at it than others.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’ll always respect that institution of the presidency, and I’ll respect President Trump.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Charles Barkley played in an era where he was never the guy. He always had to take a back seat to Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isaiah Thomas, because what did they have that he never got? A championship.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I could have never been a high diver or a gymnast because I don’t like subjectivity. I love where I’m faster than you,, or I can jump higher or swim faster. I don’t want you holding a card before I figure out whether I won or lost.”― Shannon Sharpe
40th of 100 Sharpe Quotes
“EVERYTHING I AM I OWE TO STERLING SHARPE. HE MADE ME A BETTER FOOTBALL PLAYER, A BETTER FATHER, AND A BETTER MAN. HE WAS, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, MY HERO.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“There’s no other game like the Super Bowl.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I tell you what: I bet Jerry Jones would not trade places with a 75-year black man in Chicago. I bet Joel Klatt would not trade places with a 30-year old black guy from Chicago or Watts. I bet he wouldn’t do that. You know why? It’s great to know that I’m white and a male in America.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Of all the four major sports, whether you like Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, maybe you like Bobby Orr, or you like Larry Bird or Tom Brady – Bill Russell is the greatest athlete to play in Boston.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I don’t have a problem with athletes speaking up, but I want to make sure before they speak up, they read up.”― Shannon Sharpe
“My grandmother raised her nine kids and raised my mom’s three.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I have the utmost respect for Charles Barkley. He was a heck of a ballplayer… When it comes to basketball, please quote Charles Barkley. But when it comes to race in America? Please don’t quote Charles Barkley.”― Shannon Sharpe
“If you only vote with your back pocket in mind or your own best interest in mind, I believe, it is my belief that’s a terrible, terrible way of thinking.”― Shannon Sharpe
“President Trump wouldn’t stick to politics, so he got to jump into sports. So I feel very comfortable now, moving forward, jumping back and forth. Sports to politics, politics to sports.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Peyton Manning is funny, hence the ‘Saturday Night Live’; you see him in his commercials. He’s funny.”― Shannon Sharpe
50th of 100 Shannon Quotes
“A LOT OF PROBLEMS THAT ARE GOING ON AREN’T GOING TO GET BETTER IF WE DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. RACE IS THE BIGGEST ONE. IT’S A VERY, VERY UNCOMFORTABLE TOPIC BECAUSE THE BIGGEST PART OF AMERICA WAS FOUNDED ON IT.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“I was born in the 1960s. I came up in the 1970s. I know how race relations were. The thing is, I want to advance the ball and never return to those days again. I want to keep the topic going. I’m going to discuss it. And we’re going to make America better. It’s my job as a citizen, and I demand it.”― Shannon Sharpe
“For me, having played the game of football, I look at it through a much different lens. I don’t look at it from a fan’s perspective. I’m always trying to analyze and critique things when I’m watching sporting events. That’s why I never have the sound on.”― Shannon Sharpe
“When people told me I’d never make it, I listened to the one person who said I could: me.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I had a persona as a player, and I know this will come as a shock, but I liked to talk. But don’t let the persona overshadow the person. The persona liked to have fun. The person knew when it was time to get to work.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’m just a skinny kid from Glennville, Georgia – 3,500 people, two traffic lights – going to the Hall of Fame.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’m big on green veggies: arugula, spinach, and kale.”― Shannon Sharpe
“It trips me out when I hear people say, ‘Well, I don’t see color.’ You see color. Now, how you respond and how you handle the situation once you’ve seen and noticed color is different.”― Shannon Sharpe
“In our culture, when the parents are having a tough time, the grandparents take care of the kids.”― Shannon Sharpe
“To get down on the ground and get yourself up for an extended period of time at 245 lbs… that takes a lot. When you see those CrossFit guys, none of them weigh 245, I can assure you of that.”― Shannon Sharpe
60th of 100 Sharpe Quotes
“ADRIAN PETERSON HAS HOME-RUN SPEED.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“I’ve got my bell rung, and when I first came in the league, the term wasn’t ‘concussion,’ it was ‘getting dinged’ or ‘had your bell rung.’ So I had my bell rung a few times.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I love the NFL. Everything that I really have is because of the NFL… but every idea that the NFL pitched is not a great idea.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I don’t know if Rush Limbaugh knows the difference between a screen porch and a screen play.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I like to talk. I admit it.”― Shannon Sharpe
“People say, ‘Since you got rich and famous, you’ve become insufferable.’ I say, ‘That’s not true. I’ve always been insufferable.’”― Shannon Sharpe
“Everything I am is because of my grandmother.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I love to work out.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I meet athletes from different backgrounds and see they share the same mentality and process as other athletes in other sports.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Bill Belichick makes it real easy for you to root against the Patriots.”― Shannon Sharpe
70th of 100 Shannon Quotes
“YOU CAN’T BE A POOR SPORT ALL THE TIME.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“You’re not going to win all the time.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Some guys get on the road, the first thing they do is look for the nearest golf course. I look for a gym.”― Shannon Sharpe
“In my 14 years, catching 200 yards or scoring 3 touchdowns in a game, breaking a record – none of those compared to winning the Super Bowl for the first time.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I like to think my teammates had a good time when I was around.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Growing up on a farm, I saw that if I didn’t go to the military or go to school, and I knew my mom and my family wasn’t going to be able to send me to school out of their pocket, so it basically came down to athletics. I knew I didn’t want to work on a farm. I knew I didn’t want to do manual labor the rest of my life.”― Shannon Sharpe
“THE NFL IS MADE UP OF 1,800 PLAYERS, GUYS FROM DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BACKGROUNDS, DIFFERENT UPBRINGINGS. I LOVE PEYTON MANNING. BUT I DON’T WANT 1,800 PEYTON MANNINGS IN THE NFL.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“Guys would always start by saying, ‘You ain’t going to get nothing today, Sharpe!’ And I’d say, ‘Know what? Don’t be surprised if your name is on the waiver wire tomorrow. It could have been prevented. But you wanted to go there. So now when you see your name on the wire, you’ll know who put it there.’”― Shannon Sharpe
“I didn’t bother with trash-talking people’s moms, wives, or girlfriends. I was like, ‘Hold on, man, you mean to tell me you’re making $10 million a year? That’s $9 million, $999,999 too much!’ That ate them up.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Some people think all I did was trash talk. But ask my teammates, coaches – they saw how hard I worked, how hard I prepared.”― Shannon Sharpe
80th of 100 Sharpe Quotes
“MOST OF THE GREAT PLAYERS LEAVE THE GAME UNDER THEIR TERMS.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“I’m all in on ‘Undisputed,’ and that’s where I was with football.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’m not uncomfortable with my looks.”― Shannon Sharpe
“A lot of guys are going to say, ‘Look, if it meant me getting a Super Bowl ring, I’d run right over the top of my brother.’ And I would have. But once it was said and done, I would have been very disappointed that I had to get the ring at my brother’s expense.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’m not a good talker, I’m a great talker because I do it so often over a long period of time.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I don’t want to live in a society where we ask sporting leagues or place of employment to dole out harsher punishment than what the criminal justice system would.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I want to make one thing crystal clear. The NFL does have a responsibility to make sure that their players are upstanding, law-abiding citizens.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I really carried that seventh-round tag with me my whole career, even at the end.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I felt like I always had to fight to prove my worth.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Even through all those Pro Bowls, at the end of the day, I was always just a seventh-round pick.”― Shannon Sharpe
90th of 100 Shannon Quotes
“THE GUYS THAT ARE SERIOUS SERIOUS ABOUT FOOTBALL – YOUR PEYTON MANNINGS, YOUR TOM BRADYS – I’M NOT SAYING DON’T ADVERTISE OR DO ENDORSEMENTS DOLLARS. BUT THERE’S A TIME AND A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING.”― SHANNON SHARPE
“I’m not supposed to be phonetically correct or enunciate perfectly.”― Shannon Sharpe
“When someone keeps doing something, you say that that isn’t him, he is just making some bad decisions. Sometimes those decisions reflect the person.”― Shannon Sharpe
“We have never, ever, in the history of football seen a guy that possesses what Aaron Rodgers possesses. Nobody, no quarterback in history, has the touch, the accuracy, the ability to throw the ball moving left or right, throw the ball from the pocket, throw the ball from different plains.”― Shannon Sharpe
“There’s not a throw that Tom Brady can make that Aaron Rodgers can’t, but there are several throws that Aaron Rodgers can make that Tom Brady only dreams of making.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Talent is what wins games.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I was a talker back in elementary school. I used to get A’s and B’s in everything, but I got an F in conduct.”― Shannon Sharpe
“Most fans outside Denver don’t like me, and for good reason. I give them every reason not to like me.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I’m just a skinny kid from Glennville, Georgia. I’m going to the Hall of Fame. Not to the Hall of Very Good. The Hall of Fame.”― Shannon Sharpe
“I can’t for the life of me – and I’ve tried – love someone like I love my grandmother, my sister, and my mom.”― Shannon Sharpe
“When I went to the Pro Bowl, I went as a tight end. When I made the All Pro team, I made it as a tight end. When they introduced us and I ran out of the tunnel, they introduced me as a tight end. So how is that possible that now that my career is over, they say, ‘Well, he put up stats like a wide receiver?’ It’s not my fault I was ahead of my time.”― Shannon Sharpe
