Sterling Sharpe (born April 6, 1965) is a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...

wide receiver and analyst for the

NFL Network NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...

. He attended the University of South Carolina, and played from 1988 to

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...

with the

Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. It is the th ...

in a career shortened by a neck injury. He is the older brother of

Pro Football Hall of Fame The Pro Football Hall of Fame is the hall of fame for professional American football, located in Canton, Ohio. Opened on September 7, , the Hall of Fame enshrines exceptional figures in the sport of professional football, including players, coac ...

tight end Shannon Sharpe.

Early life and college

Sharpe was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, USA, to Pete Sharpe and Mary Alice Dixon. Growing up, Sharpe lived in

Glennville, Georgia Glennville is a city in Tattnall County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 3,834. Geography Glennville is located at (31.939206, -81.926866). It is 29.3 miles from Baxley, Georgia. According to the Un ...

, with his grandparents and siblings, including his younger brother, Hall of Fame

tight end The tight end (TE) is a position in American football, arena football, and Canadian football, on the offense (sports), offense. The tight end is often a hybrid position with the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a wide ...

Shannon Sharpe. He graduated Glennville High School, playing

running back A running back (RB) is a member of the offensive backfield in gridiron football. The primary roles of a running back are to receive handoffs from the quarterback to rush the ball, to line up as a receiver to catch the ball, and block. The ...

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

and

linebacker Linebacker (LB) is a playing position in gridiron football. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage and the defensive linemen. They are the "middle ground" of defenders, pl ...

and was a member of the

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and track teams. As a wide receiver at the University of South Carolina, Sharpe set school records with 169 career receptions and 2,497 receiving yards and a since-broken record of 17 career touchdowns. He also set the school record for single-season receiving touchdowns with 11, which was broken in 2005 by

Sidney Rice Sidney R. Rice (born September 1, 1986) is a former American football wide receiver who played seven seasons in the National Football League (NFL). Rice played college football at South Carolina. He was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the ...

. Sharpe's No. 2 jersey was retired by South Carolina at the end of the 1987 regular season, making him the second Gamecock to be granted this honor while still playing. His college coach and mentor,

William "Tank" Black William H. "Tank" Black Jr. (born March 11, 1957) is a former sports agent. Black was an assistant coach for the University of South Carolina Gamecocks before starting his Columbia, South Carolina-based sports agency, Professional Management Inco ...

, left the Gamecocks to become a player-manager and represented Sharpe throughout his professional career. Sharpe was inducted into the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were v ...

in 2014.

Professional career

Sharpe was the first round, seventh overall, draft pick by the Packers in 1988 and had an immediate impact on the team. In his rookie season, he started all sixteen games and caught 55 passes. His sophomore season he led the league with 90 receptions, the first Packer to do so since

Don Hutson Donald Montgomery Hutson (January 31, 1913 – June 26, 1997) was an American professional football player and assistant coach in the National Football League (NFL). He played as an end and spent his entire 11-year professional career with t ...

in 1945, and broke Hutson's records for receptions and receiving yards in a season. Sharpe was known as a tough receiver with strong hands, who was willing to go over the middle to make difficult catches in traffic. A few years later, in

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engines ...

, Sharpe and the new quarterback,

Brett Favre Brett Lorenzo Favre ( ; born October 10, 1969) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 20 seasons, primarily with the Green Bay Packers. Favre had 321 consecutive starts from 1992 to 201 ...

, teamed up to become one of the top passing tandems in the league. In the final game of that season, Sterling and Favre hooked up for Sharpe's 107th reception of the season which broke the NFL's single-season receptions record, set by Art Monk in 1984. That season, he became one of only seven players in NFL history to win the outright "

Triple Crown Triple Crown may refer to: Sports Horse racing * Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing * Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing (United States) ** Triple Crown Trophy ** Triple Crown Productions * Canadian Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing * T ...

" at the receiver position: leading the league in receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, and receptions.

Ray Flaherty Raymond Paul Flaherty (September 1, 1903 – July 19, 1994) was an American football player and coach in the National Football League, and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was part of three NFL Championship teams, one as a player and ...

(1932),

(1936, 1941–44),

Elroy Hirsch Elroy Leon "Crazylegs" Hirsch (June 17, 1923 – January 28, 2004) was an American professional American football, football player, sport executive and actor. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967 and the College Football ...

(1951), and Raymond Berry (1959) achieved this in the years before the Super Bowl era. The only other players to accomplish this feat are

Jerry Rice Jerry Lee Rice (born October 13, 1962) is an American former professional football wide receiver who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 20 seasons. Known primarily as a member of the San Francisco 49ers, winning three championsh ...

(1990), Steve Smith Sr. (2005) and

Cooper Kupp Cooper Douglas Kupp (born June 15, 1993) is an American football wide receiver for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Eastern Washington, where he won the Walter Payton Award as a junior, ...

(2021). In the

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

season he broke his own record, with 112 receptions, which also made him the first player to have consecutive seasons catching more than 100 passes. In 1994, his 18 touchdown receptions were the second-most in league history at the time, behind Jerry Rice's 22 in 1987. On October 24, 1993, he became the second Packer in team history to catch four touchdown passes in one game since

in 1945. Sharpe's tenure at wide receiver was cut short by a

neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

injury, ending a career in which he was invited to the Pro Bowl five times (

1989 File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ru ...

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

, and

). Since he was unable to continue playing and was not on the Packers team that won the Super Bowl in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on b ...

, his younger brother Shannon gave him the first of the three Super Bowl rings he won, citing him as a major influence in his life by saying: After his retirement from the NFL, Sharpe became an analyst for the

NFL career statistics

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sharpe, Sterling 1965 births Living people American football wide receivers College football announcers Green Bay Packers players National Football League announcers South Carolina Gamecocks football players College Football Hall of Fame inductees National Conference Pro Bowl players Players of American football from Chicago People from Glennville, Georgia Players of American football from Georgia (U.S. state) African-American players of American football 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American sportspeople