Oakman thankful for second chance at Baylor

WACO, Texas - He had a month's growth of facial hair, almost unrecognizable to anyone who knew him. When Shawn Oakman was called to Bill O'Brien's office at Penn State in March 2012, he was barely able to look up at his coach and his uncle.

The highly touted recruit out of Penn Wood High was embarrassed. He was tossed from the Penn State football program for attempting to steal a $7 hoagie from a convenience store - the last straw in a host of incidents. Even then, there was some denial.

"I had to get my life together and see where football would lead me," he said. "That's what I was faced with when I spoke to my uncle and coach O'Brien that day. That changed it. I was either going to wind up in jail. Or dead."

It has been a long, arduous odyssey for Oakman, one of redemption, growth and renewed opportunities that not even he could fathom.

Once disgraced and humiliated, Oakman is now a 6-9 sophomore at Baylor, a very hefty 285 pounds and getting mentioned on ESPN's "College GameDay." Football led him to No. 5-ranked Baylor, which hosts No. 12 Oklahoma tonight.

After seven games of limited action, Oakman leads the Big 12 in tackles for losses with 12, averaging 1.71 tackles for loss a game. He has led the conference in 7 of the 8 weeks this season. Oakman is fourth nationally in tackles for losses - and the only sophomore in the top-five in tackles for losses.

A month ago, he was second in the nation.

Oakman has learned to handle success far better than he handled promise at Penn State. He's extremely grateful to O'Brien and his staff for their considerable help in getting him to Baylor, and his whole persona, once a superhero character he created for himself called "PSU Shawn," is a distant memory.

"I thought I had it all made when I got the scholarship to Penn State," Oakman said. "I really thought my next step was going to be the NFL and I really wasn't ready for anything. There is no one to blame but myself for everything that happened at Penn State. I loved it there, believe me I did. But I thought the rules didn't apply to me. I had to learn a hard lesson that they do. I had to do a lot of growing up. I had to take a deep, long look at myself. It wasn't easy."

Oakman didn't like the reflection. He faced a misdemeanor charge and a fine - all of which he said he paid himself - for the attempted hoagie theft. He found out fast the value of attending class and not being late for practice. And also the importance of second chances. He exceeded lows with new lows at Penn State.

His downward spiral reached its nadir on St. Patrick's Day 2012. Oakman went to the Mix, a convenient store on campus. He was hungry and looking for something to eat. But his meal card, which also serves as a student ID, had no more credits. Instead, he says he grabbed a 75-cent fruit juice and tucked a hoagie into his jacket with the intention of buying the juice and walking out with the hoagie.

When he approached the cashier, another worker appeared from the back of the store asking if he was going to pay for the sandwich he had in his jacket. Oakman asked, "What sandwich?"

That's when his plan unraveled.

"The cashier put my ID down on the counter and I tried getting it back," Oakman said. "I was angry. I grabbed the cashier's wrist and took it out of her hands. She started screaming and making a scene. I got my ID back, put the sandwich and fruit juice on the counter and went back to the dorms. I really didn't think anything was going to come of it."

The store turned Oakman's name over to O'Brien. Oakman had been previously warned by O'Brien about missing class, and after Oakman was falsely implicated for robbing a pizza delivery boy in October 2011, O'Brien told him, emphatically, no more drama.

Oakman ran out of strikes. O'Brien left text messages and voicemails telling Oakman to be in his office the first thing Monday morning, March 19.

"There were a lot of tears," Oakman said. "I remember crying in coach O'Brien's office when he told me I was off the team . . . coach O'Brien told me that he would help me in any way he could. It was all on me the whole time. I put my hands on someone. I'm a big, black guy who was 6-9, 260 at the time. The cashier at the Mix was this little white girl terrified. If I was her, I would have been terrified, too."

Ken and Tracy Roberts, Oakman's uncle and aunt, raised him since he was 10, taking him in from the foster-care system. Over 20 years, the couple took in 15 foster kids, but Shawn is more like a son to them now than a nephew. He has evolved from the 10-year-old who used to be filled with such rage that he had problems talking, communicating instead by grunting, to now a "Yes sir, yes ma'am" 21-year-old.

"Things were just moving too fast for him at Penn State, and he needed to mature," said Ken Roberts, a retired chief warrant officer who did tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. "You see Shawn today and he's this big gigantic monster, but deep down inside, he's still this little kid. Sometimes, it's very easy to forget that. Things started getting out of control [in] Shawn's senior year at Penn Wood, even before he arrived at Penn State.

"Shawn has these many gifts bestowed on him, he has a responsibility to manage that. He went from someone willing to give, then it was take, take, take. There were a lot of people around that you say were enablers to what Shawn was becoming. Shawn had to experience something where he had to touch and feel, and then he had to lose it."

There were signs looming before he left for Penn State. It pained the Roberts family to see the path he was heading down.

"Shawn's head was humungous when he left home for Penn State, and this college thing. To Shawn then, was just this little thing he had to do to get to the NFL," Tracy said. "People were filling Shawn's head with all kinds of things. In this house, we don't live in a hype world. We go to work. We pay our bills. We're responsible. No one pays for us. Shawn wasn't the same kid anymore."

The twist of it all: If it wasn't for O'Brien and defensive line coach Larry Johnson and linebacker coach Ron Vanderlinden, two holdovers from Joe Paterno's staff, Oakman might possibly be nowhere. It was Johnson who reached out to Baylor associate head coach Brian Norwood, a Penn State defensive back from 2001-07 who Johnson knew well.

"The coaches at Penn State are absolutely amazing," Roberts said. "I can't say enough about coach Johnson, O'Brien and Vanderlinden. When I went to see O'Brien after Shawn was kicked off the team, the man let me in his office unannounced and explained to me why he made the decision he did - and I supported it. Coach O'Brien and that staff helped get Shawn into Baylor. They gave him a second chance, when they didn't have to. That's what makes a difference between a coach that runs a program and a leader. O'Brien is a quality guy."

Since he has been at Baylor, Oakman has been aided greatly by a cousin, Joy, who has been like a big sister. And he's also made a habit of calling his aunt and uncle after each game. They don't talk about football. They talk about life. Two months ago, he went back to Penn State to personally thank Johnson. When they saw each other, all Oakman could do was hug him.

"I'm not done yet," Oakman said. "I'm not satisfied, because I still have a lot to prove, not only on the field but off the field. I still have to get there."