2013 College Football Thread (Realer than Real Deal Holyfield -->S/O Craftsy)

GUNNA GET IT said:
Butch Davis in at FIU
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Who was the guy on here that loved Darius Johnson at SMU last year? was that Gunna?  Is he a pro talent?
 
[h1]Syracuse football teammates overcame hardship and tragedy with the help of several angels[/h1]
By Dave Rahme, The Post-Standard
on December 25, 2012 at 5:00 AM, updated December 25, 2012 at 7:07 AM
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Syracuse football captain Shamarko Thomas is overcome with emotion as athletic director Daryl Gross and chancellor Nancy Cantor greet him during Senior Day last month in the Carrier Dome. Thomas' close friend Brandon Sharpe is at the far left. Frank ordoñez / The Post-Standard

Syracuse, NY -- Brandon Sharpe and Shamarko Thomas have a gift this Christmas morning for all the angels who have stood by their side for the last several years. It is a priceless gift, one purchased with sweat, tears and an iron will to overcome seemingly impossible odds.

It is the gift of themselves, former high school teammates whose steely bond of friendship has been forged by hardship, tempered by tragedy but ultimately polished by success as Syracuse University football players and students.

Sharpe was “given up” by his mother at 12 years of age and “bounced around” for several years.

“I thought life was going to be like that,” he said.

Thomas never knew his real father. The oldest of six children borne by Ebeth Shabazz, he often went without meals so his siblings would have enough to eat.

“My mom worked at McDonald’s and had to feed six kids,” he said. “Of course I would go days without eating, because my little brothers have to eat. But that’s the life you have to live sometimes.”

Thanks to the angels in their lives it was not to be their destiny. So Merry Christmas, Leslie Allard, Chris Scott, Adam Bernstein, Darlene and Michael Brown, Scott Shafer and Doug Marrone. Your investment in the lives of these young men has been rewarded. You gave them a chance when circumstances indicated they had none, and they made the most of it.

“It is a great college football story,” Shafer, SU’s defensive coordinator, said.

The story will end when Sharpe and Thomas, each a true senior on track to graduate in May, line up together for the final time at 3:15 p.m. Saturday when the Orange (7-5) faces West Virginia (7-5) in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.

It began in the halls of Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach when Thomas was a freshman hanging with the “wrong crew” and “going through a little stage of being bad, just doing what I wanted to do.” He was in the middle of a significant altercation and about to be arrested when the first angel intervened in the form of Bernstein, a school security guard who is now a Virginia Beach policeman.

Bernstein’s tough-love message of Thomas having a choice to make – following the crowd or taking control of his life – was supported by Scott, his defensive coordinator at Ocean Lakes at the time. Change was tough, though, and it was not until he visited Allard, an Ocean Lakes guidance counselor, regarding a conflict with a teacher that his course changed for good.

“It is not typical for a kid who is going down the road he was on to seek out a guidance counselor in that situation,” Allard said. “Most of the time they just leave school. It is all too common, unfortunately. You have a kid who’s the oldest of six and his mother is working long hours at McDonald’s doing the best she can, but still he had to fend for himself a lot. It tugs at your heartstrings. You want to give them things they don’t have at home.”

Allard said she saw something in Thomas that day – the conviction to seek her out and fight for his cause rather than give up – that compelled her to action.

“My role is to tell him he can do it,” she said. “From that day on we became fast friends. Coach Scott and I teamed up and worked together with Shamarko. We still work together all the time. People here say he is our son.”

The feeling is mutual.

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Syracuse football strong safety Shamarko Thomas lost his stepfather in 2010 and his mother nine months later but kept plugging away on the field and in the classroom. Frank ordoñez / The Post-Standard

“They pushed me to have an attitude of don’t give up on yourself just because people give up on you or stereotype you,” Thomas said. “Go out there and be better than that and prove people wrong. They helped me a lot through everything.”

With that support system in place Thomas was a different person as he walked the halls of Ocean View his junior year, a blossoming football star who was receiving plenty of attention from college recruiters. It was then that he bumped into Sharpe, who had transferred in from another school and was not playing football.

“He saw I was a big guy and introduced himself to me, and we just clicked right away,” Sharpe recalled. “The Shamarko I met is the same Shamarko you see today. I heard he had been a troublemaker, but I never knew that person.”

Sharpe had been no stranger to trouble himself, although it was not of his own making.

“I had a pretty rough childhood,” he said. “My real mother, she gave me up at the age of 12 and I was bouncing around from family to family. It was hard. I was so down back then . . . down on myself, down on family. I pretty much stuck to myself. I didn’t really talk to a lot of people. I thought life was going to be like that.”

And then his angel intervened in the form of Darlene Brown, Sharpe’s first cousin. A nurse, Brown and her husband adopted Sharpe.

“I’ve always been a strong believer,” Sharpe said. And I just kept praying and praying and it finally worked out. She came in and kind of changed it all around,” Sharpe said. “She showed me life has a lot more to offer and I just had to go out there and get it. She didn’t let me play football that first year. I had to prove to her, starting in the classroom, that I could do good in school, do good socially and stuff, and then she would let me play football.”

Sharpe joined his new friend Thomas on the field the following season and in Allard’s office on a regular basis for guidance, and recruiters began to notice the kid dominating at defensive end as well as the star safety. They initially decided to go to Louisville, one of Syracuse’s competitors in the Big East, although their trials were far from over.

“We had low SAT scores the first time we took it so we didn’t think we were going to make it,” Sharpe recalled. “We had to go to SAT prep together. It was just hard. I remember sitting in our guidance counselor’s office crying and wondering if I was going to make it to college. It was a lot of work, a lot of tears, a lot of frustration for both of us.”

“I know everybody has the impression of football players being pampered,” Allard said. “That is not the case at all. The NCAA made sure that is not the case. They busted their butt to get where they were. They would do their homework together in my office just to have a quiet place. They were frustrated at times, but the message from me was clear. ‘You’re going.’”

Eventually, the message became reality, but by then the question was where? Each was having second thoughts about Louisville, and new SU head coach Marrone and defensive coordinator Shafer had gotten involved.

“We looked at an awful lot of tape of an awful lot of players,” Shafer recalled. And one of the first to stand out was Shamarko, and he was open to us going down and meeting him. One thing led to another and I had a home visit with his mother and siblings and fell in love with him. I loved the way his mom brought him up. I got him up to visit and he committed, and then he pushed me to look at his teammate, Brandon Sharpe. We didn’t have as much tape on him, so we got more and before you know it he’s up here on a different visit and commits.”

“After they got into the picture we checked out Syracuse and saw it was a good school,” Sharpe said. “And then we checked the coaches’ backgrounds and saw they were real good coaches, and they were real sincere when they recruited us. We just fell in love with them, so . . .”

So, to Allard’s relief, they went to SU as a package.

“It certainly helped me to feel better knowing they were going together,” Allard said. “Considering what they had been through and were as close as brothers, it was comforting. I had no doubt each would have succeeded separately, but the love they have for each other would surely help.”

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Syracuse football defensive end Brandon Sharpe was adopted by his first cousin at age 16 after bouncing around from home to home for several years. Frank ordoñez / The Post-Standard

How much so would become known two years later when Thomas’ stepfather died during his sophomore season and nine months, in April 2011, Ebeth Shabazz died following a heart attack. She was 36.

“She never told me anything, because I always worried,” Thomas said. “She’s my best friend. I feel if she would have told me (she was ill) my mind would have been all over the place. She did it the right way. I didn’t know it was coming. It was a big ol’ shock.”

“I remember his dad passed,” Sharpe said. “It was in the summertime and we were staying in our summer apartment. And he just came to me and was crying and I kind of gave him a hug and we talked about. Then like a year later it was kind of the same thing when his mom passed except that hit harder. I knew his dad but didn’t really know him, but I knew his mom. His mom was close to my mom. That hurt me just like it hurt him.”

Sharpe attended the funeral along with Marrone and Shafer, among others from the SU football family. Allard said it was important they were there because she feared that Thomas, now responsible for five younger siblings, would leave school.

“I was terrified he wasn’t going to go back,” she said. “I told him his mother would have wanted him to return and get his degree, and his coaches helped him realize that, too.”

“Ah, it was always I have to come back,” Thomas said. “First of all, because of the education, which is a big thing. Syracuse is a great place to get an education, and I knew I could help out my family that way. And football-wise I definitely knew that would help me take care of my family, so my mindset was never to leave but to come back to help my family.”

Thomas appreciates the job his grandmother and aunt have done in raising his siblings while he has been at school but says they are ultimately his responsibility.

“Losing both parents…I’m one person they can look up to,” he said, “so those are my babies. They’re my kids. I have to take care of them. God took my mom away for a reason. She did her job. Now it’s my turn to do my job, and that’s to take care of the family.”

Sharpe is family, too. The pair has roomed together since their arrival. Each played as a true freshman and has been an integral part of the team since. Each has blossomed into a star. Each has dreams of playing in the NFL. There is more to it than that, though.

“We’re pretty much the same person,” Sharpe said.

“We’re very close,” Thomas said. “I call him my brother. We’ve both gone through hard times in life and we’ve been through it together. We cry together, argue . . . everything brothers do.”

Last month they walked onto the Carrier Dome field together for Senior Day, Sharpe accompanied by Michael and Darlene Brown and Thomas by Allard, tears flowing as he prepared to help the Orange upset Louisville 45-26.

“It was really emotional,” Allard said. “I’m so close to him I feel his pain. His mom should have been there. I knew it was going to be hard for him.”

Ebeth Shabazz was not there, not in person anyway, but the angel Thomas calls his “second mother” was, and so was the friend he calls his brother.

“God does things for a reason,” Thomas said. “He brings two people with hardships together and makes them 10 times stronger. I feel that’s what God did for us. He brought us together in the right situation. I feel like it was an angel coming to us to bring us together so we could share our hardships together and learn from each other.”

The angel had company in the form of Allard, Scott, Bernstein, the Browns and Shafer and Marrone, role models the players have honored this Christmas morning with a priceless gift – the refusal to let hardship and tragedy define them.

“When you lie down at night put your head on the pillow and think about how these young men transformed themselves by overcoming the obstacles in their way, it is the reason you get into college coaching,” Shafer said. “I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of what both went through. I’m not sure I could have done it had I been in those circumstances. It is a great college football story.”

“I know the story and talked it and lived it, and it still gives me goose bumps every time I think about it,” Allard said. “What they have accomplished . . . I really feel like a proud mom. They did what they set out to do. They are remarkable human beings. Shamarko is the strongest person I have ever met. And Brandon’s the same way. They have so much in common.”

It is a bond forged by hardship, tempered by tragedy but ultimately polished by success.

This morning, it glows.
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Stoops & Kentucky might land Mackenzie Alexander :nerd:

Would be a hell of a pull for Stoopsie and that boy would be starting from day 1, barring inury
 
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