Rider NAVBar

Pos: RB
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 221
College: Iowa
Years Rider: 1
Years Pro: 5

Hometown: Austin, Texas

2002 Preseason:  Riders wanted more power in their running game and think Shaw fits the bill.  He may not.  Even though he is big, he is more of a track star than power back.  Played under the legendary Hayden Frye at Iowa and was considered one of the best running backs to play at Iowa.  That's quite a feat considering the great Ronnie Harmon played there.  Originally a suprise third round draft pick of the New England Patriots in 1997, Shaw was a projected first-rounder and was considered the second best runningback in the draft behind Warrick Dunn.  In 1998, after losing RB Curtis Martin through free agency to the New York Jets, Shaw was the projected starting runningback for the Patriots but was a disappointment and relegated to a backup role.  In 1999, the Patriots traded Shaw to the Cleveland Browns where he only played two games and had three carries for two yards before being released and playing one game with Cincinatti Bengals in 2000.  Because of injuries to both knees that hindered the latter part of his NFL career, Shaw took himself out of football in 2001 before trying a comeback with Saskatchewan in 2002.  Has played very little football over the last three years, so at 27 years old, still has a very fresh body but lots of rust.  His knee injuries have slowed down his 4.3 speed.

Swarmed:  Shaw is swarmed by Washington Redskin defenders but still managed to score the TD.

College:  All-time leading rusher in Iowa history with 4156 yards on 837 carries and 33 TDs.  Was meriting Heisman consideration in his senior year.

http://www.gazetteonline.com/hawkeyes/football/1996/alamo/indexs.htm

Home-built Hawkeye

Sedrick Shaw's success began at home in Austin

By Mike Hlas
Gazette staff writer

AUSTIN, Texas -- From where does Sedrick Shaw draw his resolve, his toughness, his success?

No other University of Iowa running back has come within 1,400 career rushing yards of Sedrick's 4,043. No Hawkeye had ever put together back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. Sedrick has three in a row -- only the eighth player to accomplish that in the Big Ten.

From where does this 23-year-old man draw his strength, his spirit, his will to achieve?

"That's all him," his mother, Sandrea Shaw insisted.

Is it, though? Sure, Sedrick was the one making all those cuts these last four years. He was the one hitting the holes. He was the one bowling over and zipping past defenders. Still, he has not been alone. He has never been alone.

"I think his success can be traced to his family," said Darrell Crayton, who coached Sedrick in football and track, and was his algebra teacher at Austin's LBJ High School.

"His mother was always very influential on him. She's always been there. If Sedrick should do something a little out of character, his mother was good at getting right on him. He usually shaped up right then.

"He's always had positive support. Some of his friends may have been good athletes, but they didn't have the proper support. His mother made sure he didn't go astray."

Interstate 35 runs directly through the lives of Sedrick and his mother. Sandrea and her sister, Willie Mae Collins, estimate they have made 15 car trips from Austin to Iowa City over the last five years to visit Sedrick and watch him play ball. That's 16 hours one way, almost all of it on I-35.

"Worth every mile," Sandrea said.

I-35 has led Sandrea and Willie Mae 80 miles south today to watch Sedrick's last college football game as Iowa faces Texas Tech in the Alamo Bowl.

And it has been I-35 that stared Sedrick in the face almost every day he spent in his family's home in central Austin. On one side of the road, in plain sight from the Shaws' house, is the state capitol. Also in view are state government offices, a large hospital administration building and a shimmering Marriott hotel. Everything looks big and new and polished.

On the east side of the freeway sits the cramped, one-floor home that Sandrea shares with her mother, Doris Bell. It is just a few blocks from the Marriott, but it is in a poor neighborhood. You can find worse areas in America's cities. You also can find many that are far better.

Here, you can see people milling around on a street corner outside a modest convenience store, seemingly doing nothing but watching time go by. As many of the neighborhood's small businesses are boarded up as not. The Last Chance Lounge and Recreation Center apparently saw its last chance come and go.

Sedrick has shrugged and said that drugs, prostitution and street gangs are facts of life where he grew up.

"This is an inner city," Sandrea said while sitting in her living room one morning last week. "Kids are hanging out on the corner. They can get in a lot of trouble. Maybe they don't have the right guidance or no one's there to teach them. It's not easy growing up where drugs are real bad. It's just not easy."

Yet, Sedrick apparently got through his childhood unscathed.

"It's just where I lived," he said last week before one of his final practices as a Hawkeye. "You see something of everything. It's just reality.

"I don't feel ashamed or anything. I'm proud of where I'm from."

That's about as revealing as Sedrick gets in an interview setting. In two ways, he hasn't changed one bit in his years at Iowa. He has always carried the football with great assuredness and discussed himself with great reluctance.

"Personal goals are personal," he said with his head turned away from his interviewer. "They're not for everyone to know. I'm a private person.

"I have no need to talk about me. People who talk about themselves either have insecurities or low self-esteem."

Sedrick's decision to leave Austin for Iowa didn't send his football-mad hometown and home state into a dither. He was a second-team all-state running back his senior season. He set district rushing records, but wasn't regarded as a major loss for the University of Texas even though he grew up little more than a mile away from UT's Memorial Stadium.

"As I recall, Shaw was maybe a pale blue-chip recruit," said now-retired Austin American-Statesman prep football writer George Breazeale. "If Texas recruited him, it was not very heavily."

How could anyone know Sedrick had 4,000 yards in him?

"I don't think I could have imagined it," Sandrea said. "But I'm not surprised. Because Sedrick likes competition. I've always told him there's nothing anyone else can do that he can't do. It's only impossible if you don't try.

"I've always tried to keep him encouraged. I tell him there are choices in life. Whether he makes it to the NFL or not, he can still pick and choose because he's got a college education. He's already seen the bad side of the coin. Now he can see what's on the good side of it."

Sedrick found what he wanted when he was 3. It was a football.

"He always wanted to play football ever since he was a little-bitty boy," Sandrea said. "He first played it in the street. We called it roughneck football. His cousins tried to make him tough. They would throw him against the wall. He'd say, 'This don't hurt so bad. I think I can make it.'"

Fifteen years later, Sandrea and her sister were taking Sedrick to Iowa City to start college. Even though her only child had left home, and even though she cried all the way back to Texas ("We couldn't talk to her for a whole week after that," Willie Mae said), Sandrea said she felt good way deep-down.

"I was glad he left," she said. "You may find that hard to believe. But him getting away from me helped him grow up.

"He called me from the Iowa City airport and said he'd made his decision. I stuck by it. He knew it would be a long haul, but he said he felt comfortable there. Believe it or not, there was something about Iowa City I liked the first time I was there, too."

Sedrick's parents divorced when he was 3. To say he comes from a broken home, however, would be a terrible injustice. He is still in contact with his father, Charles Shaw, and has two half-brothers -- including 10-year-old Scooter.

But for almost all his childhood, he lived with his mother and grandmother in that small house.

Sandrea is employed by Pace Opportunity Centers in nearby San Marcos. She is a care-provider for mentally retarded adults, working directly with individuals in teaching vocational and living skills.

Even though she was a working single parent, Sandrea didn't have to fret about her son returning from school to an empty house.

"I've had help," she said. "Sedrick always knew someone would be there for him, either here or at my sister's house. And the backing comes from my mother. She's been good to us.

"We're just a typical family. We're close. We all have our good and bad, but we all bring something good to the table. We get it done."

It is not something Sedrick has taken for granted.

"I've been very fortunate," he said. "My mom and my grandmother were always there for me."

They were there, but they didn't coddle him.

"I'm a hard-nosed mother," Sandrea said. "Sedrick was a typical kid like everybody else. I wanted an account of everything he did if he was late. If he was supposed to be at home at 3 and got home at 3:15, he was gonna have to tell me where he's been those last 15 minutes. If he was gonna be late, I wanted him to call and let me know that and let me know he was OK."

That carries over to football. Sandrea, a self-described football fanatic even before Sedrick became a player, has some coach in her.

"I've enjoyed watching my son play football," she said. "I'm harder on Sedrick than Hayden Fry and his coaches can be.

"I tell him to make your hole. What about using the other side of the field? Oh, I'm real hard on Sedrick. I can tell you every good or bad thing he's done after every game."

Sandrea says the football, however, is something extra for Sedrick. If you want to see her beam, ask her about him getting a college degree.

"He is my mom's first grandchild who will graduate from college," she boasted. "He's got six hours left, which is two courses, and he'll graduate in May. He'll get those six hours if I have to move to Iowa City."

Tonight, Sandrea and Willie Mae will be in the Alamodome, wearing shirts they had printed for them with Sedrick's name on them. They will not be passive fans.

Sandrea is a Tech fan. Until she found out the Red Raiders were Iowa's opponent.

"This is a mess," she said. "It just happened the one team they're playing is the one other team I like. I'm not a University of Texas fan. I'm just not."

Had Iowa been selected for the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Sedrick's mother and aunt would have driven non-stop from Austin to Tampa.

"We had it all mapped out," Willie Mae said. "We were ready to get on Interstate 10 and go. We couldn't buy any Christmas presents until we saw where we were going for the bowl game."

Like his teammates, Sedrick wanted to go to a Florida bowl. Nonetheless, playing so close to home has obvious rewards for his family and himself.

"I'm glad they have a chance to see me play my last college game," he said. "That's a joy in itself."

And while he dislikes talking about himself, Sedrick had no qualms about replying when asked what his mother means to him.

"Everything," he said. "Anything and everything."

When told that, Sandrea's voice turned soft for the first time in an hour of conversation.

"I feel the same way about Sedrick," she said. "That is my joy."

Make Way:  Shaw finds a hole and bursts through it against Wisconsin.