Our Arklahoma Heritage: A Spiro running back became a dominating linebacker as a Sonner and New England Patriot
Roderick Shoate was born April 26, 1953. 5. He was one of ten children of Levester and Lula Shoate, who kept a farm at Fort Coffee in Leflore County. . The house sat near the little brick church that would later stand over his grave.
His brother Myron played football at Oklahoma too. His sister Charlotte cheered there. The family was close in the way country families are when the land is small and the kids are many.
At Spiro High he was a running back. He had the 4.5 speed that later made linebackers look slow. The Sooners staff saw the same thing and moved him to defense when he arrived in Norman. Under Chuck Fairbanks and then Barry Switzer he became the player coaches still describe first by pursuit.
He started all 34 games from 1972 through 1974. Oklahoma went 32-1-1 in those three seasons, never finished a year lower than third in the country, and won three Big Eight titles.
In 1972 the Sooners shut out Penn State 14-0 in the Sugar Bowl. In 1973 they went 10-0-1. In 1974 they went 11-0 and took the Associated Press national championship. Shoate led the team in tackles for three straight years and finished with 420, then third in school history.
He had 22 against Iowa State as a sophomore and 21 against Texas as a senior. He was consensus All-America in 1973 and unanimous in 1974, Big Eight Defensive Player of the Year twice, and seventh in the 1974 Heisman vote.
The New England Patriots took him in the second round of the 1975 draft, 41st overall. Fairbanks was already in New England. Shoate played linebacker, mostly right outside, No. 56.
He appeared in only four games as a rookie and missed 1976 on injured reserve. From 1977 through 1981 he was a regular. Official NFL lines credit him with 79 games, 64 starts, 22.5 sacks, five interceptions for 50 yards and one touchdown, and seven fumble recoveries.
In 1980 he returned an interception 42 yards for a score. The Patriots of those years were good enough to tease a Super Bowl and never quite get there.
An ankle that would not heal followed him. In April 1982 New England traded him to the Chicago Bears. Mike Ditka wanted him on the field before the ankle was ready. Chicago cut him. The structure of the NFL was gone.
He signed with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League in 1983, again under Fairbanks, started 13 of 17 games, and posted four sacks and an interception. In 1984 he finished with the Memphis Showboats, 14 games, 13 starts, one sack. That was the end of paid football.
What came after was smaller and harder. He had married while he was in Boston. She filed for divorce in March 1986. The money from those Patriot seasons did not last.
Family later said he sold his share of the Fort Coffee farm, called home for cash in 1983, and then dropped out of sight for years. In March 1987, living in the Northeast, he robbed a convenience store in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and a gas station in Cumberland, Rhode Island, then hid in the Blackstone River until he surrendered.
Courts in both states gave him suspended time, probation, and drug treatment. People who knew him in Norman still talk about how fast he was. People who knew him later talk about how far the same man fell.
He came home to Spiro in his last months, took a small apartment on Northeast Second Street, and stayed inside. Spiro Police Chief Darrell Barham said he had become a recluse.
On October 4, 1999, Myron and Charlotte found him. He was 46. The doctor who signed the certificate listed a long illness. Contemporary reporting in The Oklahoman named AIDS.
His sisters wrote that he shied from fuss, that he did not want the family to worry, and that he kept his solitude. They quoted him: My God, thanks for the time I would see. Now I feel it's time to come back to life. It's been long enough.
They buried him on October 7, 1999, at Fort Coffee Cemetery beside Mount Triumph Missionary Baptist Church, a short walk from his parents' place. About 300 people came.
Dewey Selmon, Jimbo Elrod, Terry Webb, and other Sooners sat in the pews. Webb, his freshman roommate, said he would remember the strong teammate and the films from when they played and partied. Myron told the room his brother had a hard life, that people remember you on top of the world and do not know you when you are down.
The College Football Hall of Fame elected him in 2013. Oklahoma presented the family at an Iowa State game that November. In 2026 the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame named him to its class with Sam Bradford.
The honors arrived after the apartment on Second Street was empty. The stone is in Fort Coffee. The record in Norman is still 420 tackles, three All-America seasons, and a championship year when almost nobody scored on the Sooners.
