Everyday Warrior Podcast Episode 12: Shannon Sharpe

Men’s Journal’s Everyday Warrior With Mike Sarraille is a new podcast that inspires individuals to live more fulfilling lives by having conversations with disrupters and high performers in all walks of life. In our twelfth episode, we spoke to Shannon Sharpe, a sports analyst and former tight end for the Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens.

Listen to the full episode above (scroll down for the transcript) and see more from this series below.

This interview has not been edited for length or clarity.

Mike Sarraille:
Welcome to the Men’s Journal Everyday Warrior podcast with me, your host, Mike Sarraille. I’ve been looking forward to this one. If you follow football, you know this man because he was one of the greats. Tight ends of the game, at one point he held all the records, three Super Bowls. Shannon Sharpe, thank you for joining us today.

Shannon Sharpe:
Thanks for having me on.

Mike Sarraille:
Shannon, so to prep for this, I watched your hall of fame speech, which we are going to post that because everyone needs those reminders every once in a while, that motivation and those key tenants, but I want to bring up one thing because I would not have expected this quote from you, and this was to your brother. You said, “To my brother Sterling,” which for the listeners, Sterling Sharpe was probably one of the best Green Bay Packers to ever play the game, his career was cut short by a neck injury. But you said, “I’m the only player that walked through this building,” meaning the hall of fame, “that can say he’s the second best player in his own family.” That shows a high degree of humility, I know you say you looked up to your brother. He was really, in some ways, I don’t know if I want to say a father figure, but-

Shannon Sharpe:
Yes.

Mike Sarraille:
What does that relationship mean to you?

Shannon Sharpe:
Yeah, we have a very unique relationship. He’s three years older than I am but he’s really not like a brother to me, he’s more like a father because after my grandfather died, he was the dominant male figure in my family that I got an opportunity to see every day and observe how he was doing things. So our relationship is not the typical brother-brother relationship. It’s more like a father-son relationship and I still view him as that today. When we talk, I listen to what he have to say. When he says something, I normally do what he… If he says, “Well do this,” I normally do it because even though I’m my own man, I’m about to be 54, he’s 57. The relationship and the dynamic of our relationship is very, very unique.

And so I really felt that because I know how good he was. I know how great he was. I know the path that he was on, prior to that neck injury and so it was only right for me to say this, “Yes, I’m going into the Pro Football hall of fame today and that is an unbelievable honor. And I want to thank these 44 men and women that bestowed this honor on me, but I’m the second best player in my family.” And I’m in the Pro Football hall of fame, so that just goes to show you just how great my brother was.

Mike Sarraille:
Did he also have to serve as a disciplinarian when you guys were young as well?

Shannon Sharpe:
Yeah, well, we fought, we had the brother-brother relationship when it comes to fighting because I didn’t want him to get the best of me. He tried to keep me in my place as the little brother. And so we have a lot of flak, we fought a lot, but it only lasted for five minutes and then we go back out there. “Okay, let’s go play basketball. Okay, let’s go play football. Let’s go do something together.”
So it didn’t last long. Yeah, they were heated, but I look back on it now, if we talk about a lot of things that we did and we just laughed because yeah, I think, we just had a typical relationship growing up. It didn’t really dawn on me until I started to get older that I didn’t view him as a brother, I view him more as a father. Now, when we were 8, 11 years old, no, he was a brother and I’ve tried to fight him and I’m trying to win. I’m trying to win the football game. I’m trying to win the basketball game or whatever, we competing. I was trying to win. But as I started to get older, I started getting 17, 18, 19. I was in my 20s and I was like, “There’s something unique about this relationship.” I don’t view him as a brother.

Mike Sarraille:
But coming from a Navy seal, I would not want to fight either of you. I would’ve enjoyed watching those and who got the best of one another with the individual fights. So always wondered this question, your brother went to the University of South Carolina.

Shannon Sharpe:
Yeah.

Mike Sarraille:
Which was a big football school, you went to Savannah State University, what was the decision making process behind that, that you chose a, let me say a lesser known school at the time.

Shannon Sharpe:
I chose an HBCU, I was prop 48. The year that I graduated, 1986, was the first year of Prop 48, which means you had to score at least 700 on the SAT to go to a D1 school. Or you were not, you could go to the D1 school, you weren’t going to be eligible to play, or you had to go to JUCO, or you had to go left to right. And so I remember I called my brother and I said, “Man, I’m Prop 48 and everybody is backing away.” And I was like, “I was going to join the Air Force.” And he says, “Just hold on for a second.” So he drove home and he said, “Does Savannah State still have that scholarship for you?” I said, “Yeah, coach David said, if I ever wanted to come to Savannah state, he has it for me.”

He says, “I tell you what, go to Savannah State for a year. If you don’t like it, you can always go to the military and say, ‘You know what, I went to college, it wasn’t for me. I chose to do something else,’ but you’re going there for a year.” At first, he said, “See if you like it.” But then he says, “No, you’re going to Savannah State for at least a year.” And when I went, it was the best decision of my life. I really enjoyed it. Coach Davis, who was my head coach at the time, looked at me like a son. He treated me like a son. And I can honestly say the professors and the doctors, I don’t know how many of them came to the games, but they sincerely wanted the best for Shannon Sharpe because, although, and I said this all the time, I used to tell them, “I’m going to be a professional athlete.”
They knew I was going to be a representation of Savannah State so they wanted to impart as much wisdom and as much knowledge as they possibly could, because I was going to be a reflection, not only of Savannah State, but the doctors and the professors that taught me at Savannah State. So all those, Dr. Hanes Walton who’s passed on, Norman Elmore who’s passed on, Joanne Green, Joyce McLemore, Gaye Hewitt, all of those. Man, they were, Steve Smith… They were, Dr. Welch, they were great for me and I sincerely, I got up every morning, I didn’t miss a class because I wanted to learn so much and I felt I was learning so much with what they was teaching me. I couldn’t miss a class. I would lay my clothes out the night before, my first class was at eight o’clock. I never had a class that started later than 8:00 because I was up, I was done by noon, but 8:00, I was in class.

I was attentive, had my little brief case, my jeans would start, but I felt that I was learning something every single day that was going to prepare me for the world and the best decisions that I made. I am glad, I didn’t really understand when I went to an HBCU but as I started, as I was at Savannah State, and I started hearing what they were telling me, and now, it seems to be the niche thing. Now that everybody’s talking about HBCUs, but I went to an HBCU when it wasn’t cliche, they didn’t have all the paraphernalia with all the HBCUs emblems on it. And so that was one of the best decisions that I made. And my brother was probably the main reason why I made that decision.

Mike Sarraille:
Yeah, that’s one of my biggest regrets. You go to a large university, you sort of become a number, but sometimes-

Shannon Sharpe:
Yes.

Mike Sarraille:
You have small family environments.

Shannon Sharpe:
Yes.

Mike Sarraille:
You get a lot of attention. It changes the game for certain people [inaudible].

Shannon Sharpe:
And the teachers actually knew my name. A lot of them addressed me as Mr. Sharpe. I remember Dr. Welch, who I had for a lot of, because I was a criminal justice major and he was an old FBI. And I remember him telling me, he’s like, “Mr. Sharpe, you’re going to go places.” He says, “I see the way you sit in class. I see the way you take notes.” He says, “You, well prepared individual.” He says, “I don’t get an opportunity. I hear about you. I know who you are. I know what you do on the football field.” He says, “But even if a football thing doesn’t work out, you’re going to do great thing.”

Mike Sarraille:
So it sounds like Savannah State and the leaders that university really reformative on yourself as a person, not only [inaudible]

Shannon Sharpe:
They really were. Probably one, when I first got into Savannah State, obviously, I was Prop 48, but I was in what they called developmental studies, which means I was in remedial classes. So all the classes I was taking were not going towards graduation, so I had to get out of those classes in order for me to start taking classes, that was going to go towards me getting a degree. One of my professors was Dr. Joyce McLemore.

And after the first day, I remember she asked me to read, she asked me a lot of different things. And I was like, this, I was reading and I would… She asked me a word what it meant and I would give her that. And after class, she called me up to the desk. And she always, to this day, when I went back in 2011, 2009 for Shannon Sharpe day, they retired my number and she still calls me Mr. Sharpe to this day. She called me up at the end of class, she said, “Mr. Sharpe, I don’t want to see you after this quarter.” She said, “You’re too smart to be in this class.” She said, “Now, I don’t want to see you after this quarter,” I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

I got out of there. So I was in all remedial classes, reading, I was in English and I was in Math. I got out of all of those classes and started taking classes towards my graduation inside of two quarters.

Mike Sarraille:
It doesn’t matter where you start, it matters where you finished. And I think you were living proof of that. So, you were taken in the 7th round of the draft.

Shannon Sharpe:
Yes.

Mike Sarraille:
Do you sort of associate that with Savannah State, maybe not getting as much attention? Because it was a smaller school, naturally, they didn’t know how you would play against, I guess the larger D1s.

Shannon Sharpe:
I think that’s what it was. I think the main thing is not what we didn’t get attention because obviously they found me and they got me in the 7th round. They just thought the numbers that I put up was against lesser competition. And so, “How he’s going to perform against the better competition?” But what they couldn’t measure was my desire inside to beat the man across from me. And so, “Okay. Yes, they had more people to do more things with, they had more coaches and they had a training table and they had trainers and they had strength and conditioning coaches.” And we didn’t have that, but what I had was a desire to lift my family out of poverty, to get my grandmother out of a situation, to get my family out of a situation, to make sure my kids never had to have an hour, let alone a day or life in the life that I had.
That was what drove me, but they couldn’t measure that. Okay, you can measure how tall I am, how much I weigh, how fast I am, how much I can lift, but you can’t measure what’s inside of me and how much and how bad I want to get out of a situation. And because they couldn’t measure that, they had no idea the passion that I had to leave that environment and to be good, and to go to the NFL and do a lot of the things that I did at Savannah State, do it while I was in the NFL.

Mike Sarraille:
Character will always went out. So I want to get to, you’ve got a philosophy called the 3 Ds and I want to get there. But before we do, there was a quote, and this is probably my favorite quote from you. “My life for 14 years in the NFL was football. I ate, I drank, I slept and thought football. That’s all I wanted to do. I didn’t take vacations. I didn’t own a yacht. I didn’t have a whole bunch of hobbies other than working out and getting ready for the upcoming season.”
I think for a lot of the teenagers listening in on this, to even those in their 40s or 50s, you credit your success to 100% focus and of course these 3 Ds, which I’ll allow you to describe. You gave all, here’s my question, having been a retired Navy seal, that is all I focused on. And funny enough, I never took a vacation because I felt if I took a vacation, I could possibly miss out on a rapid deployment.

Shannon Sharpe:
Right.

Mike Sarraille:
And it cost me, I think balance.

Shannon Sharpe:
Yes, there is no [inaudible]

Mike Sarraille:
Did you do it at the sacrifice of maybe balance in your life, in other areas?

Shannon Sharpe:
There is no balance to greatness. Either you choose greatness or you choose to be average. There is no scale, greatness is here. If you notice, other things that, it’s not a see-saw, there is no balance. “Okay, I got this. I’m able to tend,” you have to make a decision. What’s important to you? And what was important to me was my career. And, yes, it hurt me in terms of being able to be to a lot of events for my kids. I missed recitals, I missed soccer practices, I missed football games, I missed lessons, I missed a lot of things. I missed out on some… I was a terrible partner because the most important thing was football because I felt, and this was probably a wrong way to feel but this is the only way that I knew. I feel I could get another partner.
I couldn’t get another professional career. And so I poured everything I possibly could into that career. And it’s hurt me later, because now Undisputed has kind of taken the place of football. And so I’ve had to readjust how I think, because it was ruining my personal life because everybody doesn’t want to sit around and watch the games because we go football season, the basketball season, you got the playoffs, you got the Super Bowl and it’s a continued, it’s 24 hours. And I’ve had to like, “Bro, if you want a relationship, a meaningful relationship, bro, you going to have to, and some of this is going to have to go.”
And it finally dawned on me, it took me losing someone that I love very much to realize, you made you happy. How about make somebody else happy now? And that’s what I’ve decided to do. Now, I’m still going to be very devout about my job. I make sure I put all the time and energy and effort in it. But at some point in time, it’s about something, you got to do some other things. Now I’ve had to find that balance. I didn’t know what balance was when I played football, because I had focused so much on getting out of that environment. I grew up working 12 hours a day, making $5 a day make 20 bucks a day. But we had to drive an hour to the job. We had to be there at 6:00. We got off at 5:00, drive an hour home, and then I would shower, go play basketball or go run because I still had to see… My college season coming up, so I had to do all of that.
It took all of that. So I was like, “There is no balance to greatness.” And I knew what I wanted to be. I really knew what I wanted to be. I just didn’t want to be good because there are a lot of guys, “Well he played in the NFL,” but I wanted people to remember me. I wanted people to remember Shannon Sharpe. I wanted people to know by name. I’m not just the guy on the team, I’m the guy. I wanted them to game plan for me. You got a, “If we don’t stop this 84 kid, we’re going to lose the game.” That’s how I thought in my head. And I felt the only way for me to get there was to do it the way I did it.
And so now I’ve tried to back off of that because, at that point in time, when you were younger, the things that I think about now never crossed my mind when I was playing in the NFL. Having someone there, I didn’t think about, “If you want to be here to share this, that’s fine. But if you don’t, that’s fine too.” Now, as I’ve gotten older, I want someone to share my success. I want someone to share my happiness but I want to make them happy. At that point in time, it was all about making me happy and if you’re not happy that I’m happy, oh, well.

Mike Sarraille:
So this segues, well, and again, I’m going to quote you again. “People often ask me how a small kid from Glennville, Georgia could win 3 Super Bowls. And at one time on all the significant receiving records for a tight end.” And you said, “To all the young people,” listen to your answer, it’s called the 3 Ds break down the 3 Ds, because I think this is something people continually need to hear. And they’ve heard it before, however, it hasn’t sunk in, but you’ve clearly been successful now. Multiple domains as a Pro Football player and now as a full-time professional commentator, why are these 3 Ds sort of the foundation to your success?

Shannon Sharpe:
Well, the most important one is discipline because when I discipline you can’t accomplish nothing. I’ve seen a lot of players, a lot of people that was more talented than Shannon could articulate their word a lot better than I can articulate mine, but they were undisciplined. And discipline requires you to do your very best when no one else is watching, so when no one can see, everybody just sees the Sundays. Everybody just sees me talking on a daily basis, but they don’t know the prep that I put into that. They don’t understand the discipline that it took for me to get there. And so I’m very disciplined. Weigh the way I eat, oatmeal every morning for 27 years, I ate oatmeal. I ate oatmeal, every single breakfast for 27 years from 1993, until February of 2020, when the pandemic stopped, I stopped, I didn’t eat oatmeal anymore.

So for 27 years, I ate the same thing for breakfast, egg white, and oatmeal. And during the season I ate the same thing, every single day. I didn’t deviate. And for pre-game meal, I ate the same thing for 14 years. And I did the same thing every single day. I woke up at the exact same time. I took the same route to work. I took the same route to the stadium. I did everything. I was so disciplined, so focused. I trained, some days I didn’t even feel like it, but I knew someone might be there, some kid in high school trying to get an advantage on me. He wants my job. Now you can’t get this one, bro, because this keeps a roof over my grandmother’s head. This keep my kids fed, this keep a roof over my head, so I ain’t trying to get that up so you can’t get that from me.

Determination, I was dogging into my determination because I knew where I had come from. I wasn’t trying to ever go back there. It doesn’t do me any good to get there and then all of a sudden I have to go back there. Glennville is a great place to visit now. I don’t want to live there. I want to visit there. So I was very, very determined to get to where I wanted to be and not ever get back there. And my dedication, everybody would tell you, I’m as dedicated to a task. It is a singular focus that is the most important thing to me. When I was on the football field, beating the man across from me was more important than life. It was more important than life than beating him, that’s how dedicated I was to that task.
When I take up something, that’s why I’m very particular at what I take up because it’s all encompassing for me. I don’t know how to do 50%, I don’t know how to do 75%, I’m 100%. And so I have to be very, very mindful of that because it will consume me. Whatever it is I do, from my dogs, I try not to get hobbies because it become all encompassing for me. I know my personality, I have an addictive personality. I know that about myself. And so for me, and I tell people this all the time football was the easiest job I had because someone was paid.

God gave me that talent, I just harvested, fostered it, nurtured it and voila. I mean, you don’t have a talent to pick up pecans. You don’t have a talent to clip a crop tobacco, a clip of onions, a bale of hay, or low watermelons. You not blessed with a talent to do that, that’s just hard manual labor. And for 12 hours a day, that’s what I did. And so now you mean to tell me somebody’s going to pay me millions of dollars. And all I have to do is just, God gave me ability. I’ve worked on it, I’ve harvested and just go do that? Man, like I said, football was an easy job for me. Growing up and doing what I did, that was hard.

Mike Sarraille:
So again, those are determination, dedication and discipline. I’ve got to say watching you on Twitter and some of the photos you post. Good Lord, man, you are still killing the game. I feel like I got to go hit the gym after this. So your fitness in your diet, I mean, all I can say is highly disciplined.

Shannon Sharpe:
Yeah.

Mike Sarraille:
Tell me a little bit, you told us you still eat egg whites, oatmeal in the morning. [inaudible]

Shannon Sharpe:
I just eat egg whites, I have like an egg white burrito.

Mike Sarraille:
Yeah.

Shannon Sharpe:
With egg whites and chicken, egg whites and Turkey rolled up into that. And then I come home after work, I get home about 9:20. I have 8 ounces of turkey, carrots, broccoli. Sometimes I have rice and carrots, sometimes I have salad, rice and… But it’s normally one of those turkey or chicken, a little later, I might have another 8 ounces of chicken or turkey. Sometimes I have a lean cut of a red meat, but it’s pretty much the same thing and that’s every single day.

Mike Sarraille:
And are you measuring or your macros or is it just sort of become intuitive to this point where [inaudible]

Shannon Sharpe:
Yeah, it’s 8 ounces. If I work out a little harder, I might go 9 ounces, but I measure everything. A cup of broccoli, a cup of carrots, a cup of rice, everything is measured out. Salad with apples slice on top with olive oil and vinegarette, balsamic. Yeah, everything is measured out. Every everything to the ontic degree. It’s a lot harder now, because I’ve gotten older. In the last eight months, I’ve had two hips replaced so I can’t be as active as I want to be. I’m slowly getting back into it. So I feel good. The doctor’s going to turn me loose here in about 3 weeks and I can start going full throttle, but I’ve started working out. I’ve been back at it for about two and a half, 3 weeks now. So I’m starting to get some of my strength back. I’m starting to do some things that I feel comfortable, but I’m going to be pain free and so I’m looking forward to getting back into it and putting some new pictures up.

Mike Sarraille:
I knew we had something in common cause I had my hip replaced in December of 2020. I’m going to assure you it gets better, and to give you proof of that I actually went and skydived into Mount Everest. [inaudible] You’re going to be back at, it prior to the hip surgeries, what was your fitness regimen? Olympic lifting, swimming? [inaudible]

Shannon Sharpe:
I’ve always hated Olympic lifting because you have to be so technically-

Mike Sarraille:
Yeah.

Shannon Sharpe:
Technically, you hurt yourself. Now I did Olympic lifting, my first 3 years, strength and conditioning coach at Denver was big in Olympic lift. I didn’t really like that. I’m more the basic stuff, bench and deadlift, squats, things of that nature. But I had turned to HIIT. I started doing a lot of kettlebells, started doing a lot of CrossFit workouts, something like that. Obviously I didn’t do all that bounding and stuff because my hips and knees had gotten bad, but it allowed me to get my cardio in while doing the weights. I still bench, I still do some bench. Before I had my hip replaced, I had my first replace last July, I had the other one replaced this February. I was still doing about 450, I could still do 450 on the bench.
Still do the 120 pound dumbbells for 15 reps, so that’s my goal is to get back there while also getting the strength back in my leg. I bought a belt squat machine. I’ll start back doing squats, I’ll start doing step ups, things of that nature to get my lower body back functioning to where I am, where I can be comfortable, feel comfortable doing things of that nature. But I was doing the assault back, I like to roll. I mean, sometimes I go out there and I would roll 3000 meters, 2000 meters, or I do 5 or 10, 500-meter sprints. And I try to do under two minutes, with two minutes recovery, do that 10 times I’ll do the assault bike. I’ll do 15 calories in a minute and I’ll try to do 300. So every minute, I’m doing 15 calories.

Mike Sarraille:
Yeah.

Shannon Sharpe:
That 15, it’s all this like, “You know that you really don’t have to do this,” but my pride don’t let me stop. My pride is like, “I just go until I just can’t go anymore.”

Mike Sarraille:
So we’ve hit diet, we’ve hit your sort of fitness regimen in terms of workouts. Again, following you on social media, I know you’re extremely passionate about what is, I’m going to say a staple to your health and it’s called Tru Niagen Immune.

Shannon Sharpe:
Yes.

Mike Sarraille:
I know it’s an immune booster and I know NAD+ is growing in popularity. It’s rare that you see a guy of your stature that just believes so much in a certain supplement tell [inaudible]

Shannon Sharpe:
You got it. In the Bible, God says, has faith. He says, “If you believe I’ll show you.” Well, I’m not him, show me and I’ll believe. A guy was telling me about this product, I was like, “Yeah, okay.” And so I tried it. And so, and that’s the thing with me. If I’m going to put my name on it, I mean, I just can’t go out there and just sell a product and I don’t believe it, I don’t take the product. So I started taking it and okay, I feel the energy boost. I feel the selling, I’ll say, “Okay. Okay, maybe there’s something to this.” I said, “Well, let me take it. Let me take it a little while longer.” And then when they came out with the Immune and do it in combination. Yeah, because like I said, when you’re dealing with, get to my age and my hips were starting to bother me. I need something to get me going to get like, “Okay, it’s it.”

And man, this was a godsend because I really was starting to drag and I’m known for my physique and I felt my physique, I wasn’t starting. I’m like, “Nah, this ain’t you bro.” But I just didn’t have the energy, I just didn’t have the get up and go. And then I started taking the product. And now that I take the Immune and I do it in combination, man, like I said, “Give me a couple of weeks. I’ve only been working out about two and a half weeks after my hip surgery, give me another month. I’d like to come back and talk to you in about a month,” but 2, 3 months when I’ve had a solid foundation of training under my belt, I’ll be where I need to be.

Mike Sarraille:
You’re where a lot of people would like to be right now, so that’s your humility speaking it. For those listening, and so I’m going to go pick up a bottle from you, a guy who values fitness, diet in his performance, what would you tell the guys who are going to take it 30 days, 60? Give it 30 days, 60 days?

Shannon Sharpe:
Yeah. I would say 6 to 8 weeks.

Mike Sarraille:
6 to 8 weeks.

Shannon Sharpe:
Here’s the thing, when I tell my friends about it, they like, “Sharpe, does it work?” I say, “Are you going to work?” I say, “Don’t tell me you want to keep your same eating schedule, your same diet, your same habits and think this is going to compensate for that because it’s not.” What medicine do they get at the doctor. Even the doctor, when they give you medicine, they tell you, “A nice diet, you need to exercise.”

But now all of a sudden you want to just take a product and it’s supposed to trump all your bad eating habits, all your bad lifestyles to habit. You want this medicine to trump that or to supplement to trump that. It doesn’t. So that’s what I tell the guys, “Are you going to eat sensible? I’m not saying you have to be as strict as I am, but you can’t eat pizza four days a week.”

Mike Sarraille:
Yeah.

Shannon Sharpe:
“You can’t continuously drink.” Like, “Sharpe man, you know I need my burgers. Sharpe man, you know bro, you know I need my pizza now.” “Okay, well bro, you don’t need this,” because you’re not doing what you should do. You want something to compensate for your bad diet and you can’t out exercise or take enough supplementation for bad diet.

Mike Sarraille:
There are no shortcuts and we talk about that quite often on this podcast. Shannon, we usually end this with two key questions and I think you might have answered one of the key questions, but we start off with this. How is Shannon Sharpe going to measure whether he lived a purpose-filled life?

Shannon Sharpe:
That’s a very interesting question because I think it’s changed over time. When I was growing up, the only thing that I thought of was getting my grandmother out of this environment. And every day I went to work, I was like, “Okay, I got a roof over my grandmother’s head. Okay, I got food on my grandmother’s table. My grandmother never has to work again. My grandmother can go as fishing, can fish as much as she wants.” Then it transfer [inaudible] kids make sure my kids have a roof over their heads, make sure my kids go to college. Now my kids are grown, so now it’s about a partner, someone that completes me and I complete them. We travel the world together, she’s my best friend. I’m her best friend. We can talk about everything, there’s nothing off limits that we can’t talk about. And we have something deeper than just surface level conversation.
Whatever her favorite TV show is. I want to know why it’s her favorite TV show and I want to watch it. I’m going to say, “Okay, this is my favorite TV show, sit down and watch it with me,” that’s something that I really want. As you get older, it’s amazing things that used to interest you when you were in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, they no longer have the same. They don’t interest you now. And so that’s why I’m in my life now. It’s all about finding that person being with that person and says when it’s all said and done, I don’t measure my life in years. I measure my life in summers. I don’t know how many more summers I have. I’d like to think I have at least 20. But at the end of that, if I only have 20 summers, if I have that person that I spent I those last 20 summers with, I like, “You know what, Shannon Sharpe, you did all right. You did all right by your family and you did right by this person.” I’ll be happy.

Mike Sarraille:
That’s powerful, man. Shannon, do you have any projects coming up that you want the viewers to know about, anything that you’re excited about?

Shannon Sharpe:
Well, I’m excited about I’m going to be on Skip and Shannon: Undisputed for another three years. I got my podcast Club Shay Shay, I have an alcohol brand called LA Portier, which is a cognac it’s named after my grandmother, that’s going to be restocking and hitting shelves in May. And so that’s about all I can handle at one particular time. I don’t like to put too much on my plate because whatever I put on my plate, I want to make sure I’m able to eat. Sometimes people put too much on their plate and some get some things, get uneaten. So whatever I put on my plate, I’m going to make sure I’m able to eat all of it. So that’s what I have right now and so that’s what I’m in the process [inaudible].

Mike Sarraille:
I cannot thank you enough for coming on. We will make sure that we have links to all those initiatives that you have going on and I continue to look forward to continue watching you on TV. Man, you bring a humor to the game. You don’t hold back, man. And that [inaudible] directness that I think a lot of us appreciate. Again thank you and for all of those, thank you for joining the Men’s Journal Everyday Warrior podcast. This episode with Shannon Sharpe, we’ll see you again. Thank you.

Shannon Sharpe:
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.