NORMAL, Ala. (WHNT) – Sam Shade had just finished his eight-year NFL playing career and returned home to put his finance degree from the University of Alabama to good use.
Although several of his professional coaches had encouraged him to consider coaching, he had no interest. Shade always thought coaches worked too much, and he didn’t care. The Birmingham native moved home and was ready to start his life after football, not knowing that his second life as a footballer was about to begin.
“I got my insurance license and was trying to get into this field and financial services,” Shade said. “A good friend I played with at Alabama got me to volunteer to coach at the middle level.”
Shade volunteered his time to coach young athletes, but he quickly discovered a passion and was hooked.
“That’s when I realized there was something about coaching that I just couldn’t escape,” Shade said.
Shade’s football journey began in the Birmingham area when he was around five years old, watching his older brother play. Back then, you had to be seven years old to play football, and Shade says that by the time he was old enough to play, he was chomping at the bit to get on the field.
As he got older, Shade played at Wenonah High School, where he was a standout on offense, defense and special teams. He was heavily recruited but ultimately chose to attend the University of Alabama.
“It was close to home back then, you know, back then you didn’t have Facetime and all that,” Shade said. “It was close to home, I had family members who were big Tide fans and at the time I felt more comfortable there than some of the other places I had visited.”
Shade’s career with the Tide began earlier than he imagined. He said he expected to redshirt his freshman year after moving to the defensive side of the ball. Shade began earning playing time with the second team at corner and providing safety for a successful Alabama team.
The following season, in 1992, Shade became a full-time starter. The Tide, led by legendary coach Gene Stallings, went 13-0 and won the national championship.
“There have been more talented teams that have played at the University of Alabama, but I think what made that team really special was we had a bond because back then we all lived in the same dorm, we had athletic dorms,” Shade said. “We all lived together unless you were married, that’s the only way you wouldn’t leave in the dorm so we had a really close knit group.”
After being named captain his senior year in 1994, Shade was selected in the fourth round of the 1995 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. He had a successful career in the NFL before becoming a volunteer coach.
After that volunteer coaching job, Shade made stops at Samford and Georgia State as an assistant. Along the way, he realized he wanted to be a head coach.
“I didn’t want it to happen overnight. I knew there was going to be a process, I didn’t know how to go about it, I was really thinking about becoming a college head coach at some point,” Shade said.
Then Shade was fired. He joined the Cleveland Browns staff in 2018 as an assistant special teams coach. The previous season, Hugh Jackson and the Browns were 0-16. Shade says he knew when he took the job that if the team didn’t get off to a good start, his stay in Cleveland would be short-lived.
The team started 2-5-1 and Jackson was canned. But in the coaching business, getting fired is a rite of passage, and Shade knows it.
“I always said, I try to do the best job I can, I always have,” Shade said. “If that’s not good enough and I’m asked to leave, then hey, I’m going to shake your hand like a man, look you in the eye, thank you for the opportunity and move on.”
After his time in Cleveland, Shade returned home to Birmingham and took a year off from coaching to spend time with his family. But his absence from the game won’t last long.
In 2020, he became the head coach for the first time in his career at Pinson Valley High School. Shade found immediate success coaching a talented roster that included fellow Alabama great Ga’Quincy “Kool-Aid” McKinstry. The Indians won the 2020 6A state championship.
This success led to Shade being hired as the head coach at Miles College, where he quickly found success again, winning 10 games in his second season at the helm of the program.
Shade says he’s not sure what to attribute his ability to achieve rapid success to, other than who he is as a person.
“I’m just a guy that feels like I have a really good work ethic. I don’t listen to outside noise,” Shade said. “I’m going to do it the way I know how to do it and if it’s good enough, great, and if it’s not good enough, then thank you.”
Last December, Alabama A&M fired Connell Maynor after seven seasons on the Hill. Shade said when the position opened up, he knew he not only wanted to make the jump to Division I coaching, but he also wanted to coach in the SWAC.
“I feel like the SWAC is really good football,” Shade said. “Historically, there’s been a lot of great players that have played in this conference, there’s a lot of NFL Hall of Famers and first-round picks, a lot of Hall of Fame coaches have coached in this conference, and so just that part of it, the competitive side in me looked at that and said I want to be a part of that.”
Shade says that when he arrived at A&M, the program wasn’t that far from where he wanted to be, pointing to the fact that in 2024 the team has lost four SWAC games by an average margin of seven points per game.
After a 4-3 start in his first season, Shade says the program still isn’t where he wants it to be, but he has to continue to remember that it’s only the first year of his tenure and the Bulldogs have been riddled with injuries.
The Bulldogs are in the middle of the bye week, during which Shade hopes they can be healthy as they prepare for the Magic City Classic with Alabama State.
“Alabama State is a very good football team,” Shade said. “They’re one game away from being basically undefeated in the SWAC and leading the East. It came down to these guys and Jackson State, but Alabama State has played really good football all season long, and so we’re going to have our work cut out for us.”
A win in his first year in the classic would be a feather in his cap and a major step toward what Shade hopes to do for the program, making it a powerhouse within the SWAC once again. If their track record is any indication, the team could be there quickly.
After all, Shade’s rise from his first head coaching job to becoming a Division I head coach took just under five years, which isn’t bad for a guy who never wanted to do it in the first place.
