Performance enhancement
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Not so long ago, there was none of this.
Back then, Tom Shaw was an assistant track coach at Florida State, training athletes for NCAA meets and Olympic trials. Back then, 15 years ago, when potential NFL draft picks readied for the draft, they stayed close to their campuses, worked out and hoped for the best.
Shaw didn’t know them. They didn’t know Shaw.
Now they all know him: They believe he can help them make money.
“I’m here for the same reason as everybody else – get bigger, stronger, faster,” said Virginia offensive tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, projected by most as a top-10 pick in April’s NFL draft.
“Here” is Disney’s Wide World of Sports, where Shaw’s performance program now exists. Shaw was flushed out of Kenner, La., a suburb of New Orleans, by Hurricane Katrina, and Disney agreed to provide a business locale for the foreseeable future.
His program is an intensive, wide-ranging training system for the physical aspects of the NFL, a four-to-six-week crash course for NFL Draft Combine testing and a follow-up refresher leading up to the draft.
Time’s almost up: Combine testing starts Thursday in Indianapolis.
“The NFL puts a pretty high value on how someone performs at a specific place, but if you’re an athlete, you don’t just show up and perform,” Shaw said after a recent workout session at Disney. “You’re cheating yourself if you don’t fully prepare. You’re talking about a lot of money that can be gained – or lost.”
Shaw, a 45-year-old New Port Richey, Fla., native, can thank Deion Sanders for where he is now. In the late 1980s, Sanders was a two-sport phenom: football with FSU and baseball with the New York Yankees.
Shaw, then an assistant under FSU track coach Terry Long, agreed to help Sanders prepare himself for exactly what the NFL wanted to see: short shuttle runs, a 40-yard dash, one burst series of 225-pound bench presses.
Other athletes at FSU followed suit, and a cottage industry was born.
Today, the industry works systematically. Draft hopefuls hire agents in December and January, and agents recommend pre-combine workout specialists.
Agents Eugene Parker, Roosevelt One of Shaw’s favorite pupils – former and current – is Ike Taylor, a cornerback who made a key fourth-quarter interception for Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XL. Taylor was a walk-on tailback at Louisiana-Lafayette, then moved to the secondary before his senior season.
Pre-2003 draft, Taylor spent time with Sanders. Then he absorbed tips from Williams. Taylor was solid at the combine and better after it, a fourth-round pick who started for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.