There are 98 days left until Sun Devil football kicks off the new year. Yesterday, we looked at one current player leading the charge in CJ Fite, but today we recognize the best to ever wear 98, the legend Shante Carver.
A California native, Carver was a multi-sport athlete in high school, starring in basketball as well as playing both tight end and defensive end. Arizona State's head coach at the time, Larry Marmie, wanted Carver's elite athleticism on the edge rushing quarterbacks.
Carver came to Tempe and, after taking a redshirt year, immediately became a starter. He would become a fixture on the defense for all four years, making him one of the very few four-year starters in program history.
Carver was an immediate hit, too. His 10 sacks as a freshman remain a school record to this day, and he followed it up with 11 sacks in his sophomore season. Carver put up 10 more sacks as a junior, which marked the first year under new head coach Bruce Snyder, and earned the Sun Devil defense the iconic nickname of "Shante's Inferno."
Coming into his senior season with more hype than ever, Carver delivered with 10 more sacks. He finished his college career with 225 tackles, 41 sacks, 86 pressures, 57 tackles for loss, 16 passes broken up, two forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries, and also blocked five kicks.
Carver set just about every program record for a defensive end, some of which - namely the amount of career sacks and career pressures - still stand today. Most of them were later broken by Terrell Suggs, but Carver created the standard that Suggs then met.
After graduating from Arizona State, Carver looked to the NFL, where he was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys with the 23rd overall pick.
The Cowboys had just won the last two Super Bowls, but head coach Jimmy Johnson left the team due to repeated conflicts with owner and general manager Jerry Jones. At the same time, Dallas was trying to bolster their pass rush, as stars Charles Haley and Tony Tolbert were both dealing with recurring injuries.
Carver arrived in Dallas to meet a fellow Sun Devil legend and pass rusher in Jim Jeffcoat, who ultimately retired after Carver's rookie year. Unfortunately, Carver's NFL career did not mirror Jeffcoat's, as injuries limited him as a rookie to just 10 games played.
His second year in the NFL saw more playing opportunities, as Haley continued to get injured, but Carver was unable to break out the way he had in Tempe. The Cowboys brought in competition for him, and a combination of injuries and a suspension ultimately led to Carver not being extended when his rookie contract expired.
Carver still left Dallas with a Super Bowl ring, and he later made a name for himself in both the XFL and AFL start-up leagues. As a member of the Memphis Maniax, Carver was named to the All-XFL team, and was then named to the All-Rookie team in 2002 playing for the Dallas Desperados of the AFL; ironically, Carver's head coach there, Will McClay, is now the de facto general manager of the Cowboys.
Whether or not Carver lit the NFL world on fire, he was an elite Sun Devil who changed the standard for pass rushers in Tempe forever. Every new defensive end comes into Mountain America Stadium chasing his legacy, and so far only one player has ever reached it.
In 2012, Arizona State inducted Carver into their Hall of Fame, an extremely deserving recognition for this Sun Devil legend.