Ten Questions With

[CLEVELandMILIDH]

Ten Questions With: Sheldon Brown

Posted 2 hours ago

 

Defensive back Sheldon Brown discusses what his favorite NFL memory is, who inspires him and much more in this installment of Ten Questions With.

 

1- Other than your family, what do you miss most about home in South Carolina when you are away during the season? “I miss going out on Lake Wylie and hanging out with my friends. I wakeboard, boat and ski boat.”

 

2- What is your favorite moment from your football career? “My favorite moment would probably our NFC Championship win and going to the Super Bowl back in 2005. That or my first career interception, which Quincy Carter threw to me against Dallas, one of our rivals. My first career sack was against Jeff Garcia during my rookie season. Those three moments were priceless.”

 

3- What made you want to start a landscaping business? “One of my buddies that I played with in college, Trevon Matthews. He actually played in Cleveland. He came to Cleveland out of South Carolina as a free agent. He was the guy that was interested in doing it and I supported him in that, and invested in him. He has been focusing on that while I focus on football.”

 

4- Tell us why the Lupus Foundation of America is so important to you? “It’s important to me because my grandfather passed away from the disease and my father has been diagnosed with the disease also, so it has hit home like none other. It’s no more important than any other disease, but a lot of people do cancer research and you have the breast cancer awareness and things like that. Lupus is just one of those diseases where it’s a serious disease, but it really doesn’t get that much attention.”

 

5- What was the biggest adversity you have had to overcome in your life? My senior year of high school, I was supposed to report to the University of South Carolina. The day I was supposed to report, the clearinghouse didn’t accept one of my courses so I had to go back and take a science course and sit out of college one year. I could have gone to junior college, take two years of junior college and then transfer and spend two years at a division one school. I had to suck it up and go back and take that high school science course before I could report to college. That was a real adverse situation because when you are walking around as the man on campus and things don’t work out, everybody starts to have that negativity creep in your mind like, ‘I told you he wasn’t going to do nothing with his life,’ and this and that. Through family and God, we made it.”

 

6- Why was going back to school and finishing your degree so important to you? “It’s really important because I’m big into hanging around the college kids at South Carolina. My heart is at the university, they didn’t give up on me during that whole high school ordeal. They gave me the opportunity to get the credit that I needed and still get a scholarship. When I go preach to those guys and if I don’t have a degree and I’m telling you, ‘Listen, you need to stay in school and get your degree,’ I’m basically lying. ‘When did you graduate? Oh don’t worry about when I graduated.’ Its proof in the pudding: now when I speak it, it’s true. It’s important and I think it hits home a lot more now that I waited so long and I still went back to get it to show the importance of it. On the other side of it, it made my mom very, very, very happy.”

 

7- After being all-state in football, baseball and basketball, why did you choose to play football at South Carolina? “Football was the only sport at a division one level that I could get a full scholarship. I could have played baseball at a division one school, but I still would have had to pay for either books or boarding and I didn’t want to put that burden on my parents.”

 

8- Why is it so important for you to be a factor in the lives of the young people of Lewisville High School in your hometown? “One thing when I was in that high school, Mike Barber was one of the guys that was in the NFL, and I remember him coming back once or twice. I could remember myself and other guys wishing they could come around more. Brian Williams was my neighbor, and he played professional baseball. I would always be like, ‘Brian is never home, Brian is never home.’ I wanted to see more of him. The reason why kids want to see more of us is because they want to know that there’s a legitimate chance that this can happen for you. This is me. Look, this is me in the flesh. This is not me sending money to the school, this is not me just talking about the school, this is actually me. Look, I dress just like you, I’m going to go in here and work out in this training room just like you to show them that I’m no different. I just work hard and I’ve just experienced stuff in life that I want all of them to experience and I’m trying to show them that it’s me. Touch me, I’m no different.”

 

9- Tell us your vision of the Boys Home you intend to develop with your good friend Andre Goodman. “My vision is a safe haven and an opportunity for those kids that don’t have much. To give them a place to go where they feel wanted and they feel like there are really people that care. We, me and Andre, are supposedly role models in our neck of the woods where we grew up. In the area, I don’t think we have enough people really doing things of that caliber that have made it before us.”

 

10- Who has been the most inspiring person in your life and why? “My grandmother, it’s a no-brainer. That year I sat out, she had a stroke and we were getting ready to pull the plug on her. Everybody was in the hospital crying at her bed and we had given up. My dad and his sisters were just like, ‘No way, let’s wait another day.’ They waited another day and she started to come around a little bit. To this day, she is still living and made a full recovery. Anytime anybody tells me life is hard and you can’t do this and you can’t do that, I’m like, ‘BS.’ I’ve seen my grandmother do that and on top of all that, four years later, I’m in my senior game against Clemson, our rival. Her only college game she was able to attend of mine, in a wheelchair and all, I get two picks, we win the game and I’m the MVP. It’s like, whatever you want to throw at me, throw at me. It’s just a sick feeling. I don’t think I had a multiple pick game in my college career except for in that game.”

[SJ_Browns]

great interview and that's a nice sig, man!

[mopaji]

That is just a good dude right there. Another example of Mangini's push to get character guys in here. Sheldon is the type of guy you wanna root for.