When he's running, he's Richard Sherman, wide receiver for the Stanford football team. When he's long-jumping and triple-jumping, he's the two-sport athlete who also letters in track and field.
But there are even bigger moments when he's simply walking on campus. For the first time in Sherman's life, walking isn't something he associates with dying. When he grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and then nearby Compton, says Sherman, walking meant being visible, and being visible meant being in danger from a gang-fueled siege of constant random violence.
“When I got here,” says Sherman, sitting outside Maples Pavilion after football practice, “I could walk anywhere and wear anything. Oh my God, if they only knew back home.”
Sherman, a junior being forced to miss a big chunk of this season with a knee injury, says coming of age in Compton had a glimmer of benefit. It hardened him enough, he says, to make him feel as if he has “kind of an edge” when coping with life's challenges. But measuring that advantage against his sense of loss—he counts eight friends killed during high school—is a painful reckoning. If he comes across as brash, say those who know him, it's just exhilaration in overdrive.
“I know it might seem at times like he's cocky,” says Sherman's older brother, Branton. “But he's humble at the same time, and very giving.”
The football coach, Jim Harbaugh, relishes the chance to talk about Sherman the person as well as Sherman the player.
“He's got a big heart,” Harbaugh says. “He's one of those personalities that walk into a room and can light it up. People like him and want to be around him.”
Then Harbaugh smiles a tad slyly and a tad confessionally. “I've never been blessed with that. I'm more the type of person that has to grow on you.”
Stanford's passing offense started the season slowly, and a knee injury from track and field season lingered with Sherman, although he tried to fight off any sense of limitation from it (“I'm going as much as I can until my body gives up”). His exuberant athleticism produced one big opportunity when he scooped up a blocked punt adroitly enough to return it for a touchdown against Texas Christian in game three. But he ended up missing game five against Washington and then underwent arthroscopic surgery, knocking him out of action for a projected four to six weeks.
Any big moment for Sherman is a potential signature moment. Once his helmet comes off, his dreadlocks fly in celebration. He's a lanky 6-foot-3 and 191 pounds; his gestures and movements suggest a body that's surfing the grass. If he could have a career as a pro player—“that's the ultimate goal,” he says—he would be camera- and interview-ready from his first day in training camp.
Sherman, a communication major, credits his parents and an aunt for making him take academics seriously while at Compton's Dominguez High. There would be tests, says Sherman, with questions about topics that were unheard of when his badly out-of-date textbooks were written. But he had been taught at home to think of himself as a student as well as an athlete. Motivation to be the latter simply came from observing his brother.
“Basically, whatever he did, I did after him,” Sherman says. “On top of that, I tried to do whatever he did, but a little better.”
His brother, a house painter who played some football at Montana State, says, “I was never jealous. I always pushed him to be that, to be better than me.”
One thing Richard imitated is more or less the same, instead of better. Branton had the dreadlocks first.
