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Graham Shuler announces he will leave football to pursue other opportunities
Senior center Graham Shuler (above) has announced that he will not return to the team in the 2016 season to pursue his ambitions and other opportunities outside of football. (RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)

Graham Shuler announces he will leave football to pursue other opportunities

Do-Hyoung Park

Senior Staff Writer

By: Do-Hyoung Park | Senior Staff Writer

After 27 consecutive starts, 34 career games played, three Pac-12 championships and two Rose Bowl victories, senior center Graham Shuler announced on Tuesday via an open letter to the Stanford community that he will hang up his cleats and follow his ambitions outside of football.

“After wrestling with this decision for the last several weeks, I feel a strong sense of empowerment to do something different  —  to chase my dreams and opportunities outside of football,” Shuler wrote.

In his letter, Shuler explained that Stanford has “empowered me beyond my wildest dreams” and feels an urge to pursue his passions off of the field in a greater capacity around the Stanford community.

He goes on to thank his teammates for their tight-knit brotherhood over the last few years and head coach David Shaw, offensive line coach Mike Bloomgren and strength and conditioning coach Shannon Turley for their contributions in developing him into the player and man he is today.

“This is the biggest step in my journey, because it’s the next step,” Shuler wrote. “I will carry the lessons football has taught me forever.”

After first coming to Stanford in 2012 as part of the legendary recruiting class that brought the best offensive line haul in school history to The Farm, Shuler redshirted his freshman season before seeing time as an extra offensive lineman in Stanford’s heavy packages as a sophomore in 2013.

With the graduation of Khalil Wilkes after the 2013 season, Shuler assumed the starting center role in 2014 as a junior and started every game for the remainder of his career.

As a senior in 2015, Shuler earned All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention honors and was part of a Stanford offensive line that earned finalist honors for the Joe Moore Award, given to the nation’s top offensive line.

During his time on the team, Shuler was particularly well-known for being one of the team’s de facto spokesmen due to his closeness with many of his teammates and his eloquence and candor in interviews.

With Shuler departing, rising junior Jesse Burkett will likely take over as Stanford’s starting center as the Cardinal will look to replace three pieces from their 2015 starting offensive line: Shuler, Kyle Murphy and Josh Garnett.

Shuler will graduate from Stanford with a degree in science, technology and society.

 

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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About Do-Hyoung Park

Do-Hyoung Park '16 is a sports desk editor, copy editor and angry uncle that leads The Daily's football coverage. Do-Hyoung is a proud three-time winner of the "Least Likely to Actually Have Friends Outside The Daily" Award and spends most of his free time being a thorn in the sports editors' side while they attempt to do actual work. He is the Stanford correspondent for Sports Illustrated's Campus Rush, will cover the Twins for MLB.com this summer and is a senior from St. Paul, Minnesota studying chemical engineering and computer science. Contact him at dhpark 'at' stanford.edu.
  • Candid One

    So, Graham Shuler is savvy about his real limitations if he’d followed the pro football route…like a limited stint–maybe–in pro football as UFA…risking CTE. I did read his expression of gratitude. He alludes to greater aspirations than the carnage at the line of scrimmage “at the next level”.

    Young Mr. Shuler has always seemed to be a “heady” guy…fitting for a football center. So, now he’s saying that football can no longer “float his boat”…that he’s heading for deeper waters? Well, fair winds to thee, Mr. Shuler! Thanks for the memories!

  • maddogsfavsnpiks

    A NY Daily News article from 2013 reports: “Frederick Mueller from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his colleagues found…” that there were 243 total college and high school football deaths over 20 years, 1990-2010, which.. “works out to one for every 100,000 high school and college football players during that period. High school athletes accounted for 203 of those deaths; but because there are so many more high school players, a college player was statistically almost three times more likely to die playing football than a high school player during the study period.”

    On many OLs, including Stanford’s, the center makes the calls that determine the blocking schemes before each play, as we see in the photo above. He is a second “QB” on the LoS. Not only does that clearly elevate Graham Shuler to the level of *one sharp cookie*, his farewell message to the community proves to be a moving and eloquent example of his intelligence.

    People can speculate that, “oh he wouldn’t have made it in the pros anyway”, but that begs the burning question – what are the social limitations in vision, awareness and comprehension that encourage most football players to continue to ignore the significant risks of major bodily and/or mental injuries, up to and including death ? Is it not the element of “ultimate sacrifice”, just as in the gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, and in our own wars of empire, that elevates the mundane, earth-bound effort to the hallowed ground of the heroic ?
    Here we see that Shuler has broken free of the limitations binding him and so many others.

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