He graduated Glennville High School, playing running back, quarterback and linebacker and was a member of the basketball and track teams.
2 jersey was retired by South Carolina at the end of the 1987 regular season, making him the second Gamecock to be granted this honor while still playing.
[citation needed] His college coach and mentor, William "Tank" Black, left the Gamecocks to become a player-manager and represented Sharpe throughout his professional career.
Ray Flaherty (1932), Don Hutson (1936, 1941–44), Elroy Hirsch (1951), and Raymond Berry (1959) achieved this in the years before the Super Bowl era.
The only other players to accomplish this feat are Jerry Rice (1990), Steve Smith Sr. (2005), Cooper Kupp (2021), and Ja'Marr Chase (2024).
On October 24, 1993, he became the second Packer in team history to catch four touchdown passes in one game since Don Hutson in 1945.
Since he was unable to continue playing and was not on the Packers team that won the Super Bowl in 1996, his younger brother Shannon gave him the first of the three Super Bowl rings he won,[4] citing him as a major influence in his life by saying:[5] The two people who influenced me the most, good or bad, are Sterling and my grandmother.
Everything I know about being a man, about football, everything I know about sports, pretty much in life, is because of those two people.In the span of his seven seasons in the League, he was second in receptions and receiving yards and third in touchdowns (with Jerry Rice ahead of him in each category).