Sam Shields’ career at the University of Miami was one long free fall into a bottomless pit.

Few players came to “The U” with so much hype and promise and left with so much disappointment.

When he graduated from Booker in 2006, many people touted him as a better receiver than Southeast legend Peter Warrick, which is saying something.

Warrick earned All-American honors at FSU and was a first-round NFL Draft pick (fourth overall).

Shields wound up in Randy Shannon’s doghouse in Miami, was never drafted and played defensive back his senior year.

He was labeled a bust.

It was the best thing that ever happened to Shields, which is why today’s Super Bowl has a special interest to so many people.

Shields joined the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent last summer, accepting a $7,500 signing bonus, which by NFL standards is lunch money change. He earned a league minimum $325,000 salary.

But he has become what is known in the business as a steal, turning a small window of opportunity into becoming an integral part of the Packers’ secondary that will go against Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger and his talented receiving corps.

Shields wears No. 37 -- the same number that belonged to Manatee High great Tyrone Williams when, as a cornerback, he helped the Packers win their last Super Bowl title in 1997.

Williams can see the similarities and was hoping to catch up with Shields before Sunday’s kickoff.

“We played a lot of bump and run, which is what you have to do at Green Bay, and I wanted to give him some advice. I saw a couple of plays where he is a little late off his jam,” Williams said. “But he is a great talent and has done a great job. I am proud of him.

“To come into this league and play with as little experience as he has is hard. But when you’ve got his kind of speed it can hide a lot of weaknesses and that helps him tremendously.”

It’s a tribute to Shields that the conversation about him these days is about football and not off-the-field issues and character flaws.

Shields had his biggest day on his biggest stage when he intercepted two passes in the Packers’ NFC Championship win over the Chicago Bears two weeks ago.

He is the best receiver Sarasota Booker ever produced and one of the best to come out of the football hotbed we live in. But his ability to shut down receivers is what will put him on the field today.

Shields is doing what most people might consider the impossible.

Going from receiver to defensive back is like trying to change a right hander into a lefty.

Few can appreciate that more than Southeast Hall of Fame coach Paul Maechtle, a long time Packers fan and Wisconsin native. He coached Warrick and was tormented by Shields when he was a receiver for Booker under Fred Gilmore.

“After the Chicago game, I called up Fred and thanked him for all he had done to make Sam such a good player,” Maechtle said. “The only thing surprising is that he is on the other side of the ball. He was such a prolific receiver in high school. Making the switch to defense after only playing it one year in college is extremely difficult.”

In his first three years at Miami, Shields had the reputation as a potentially great receiver with poor practice habits and a penchant for getting into trouble and missing classes.

His inexperience at cornerback showed, but so did his innate skills and speed. Shields was timed at 4.28 seconds in the 40-yard dash in UM’s pro day, which was enough to put him back into the NFL Draft discussion.

Unfortunately his personal timing wasn’t as good as his 40-yard time. He was arrested last March on a misdemeanor possession of marijuana count and it cost him a chance of getting drafted, though the charge was eventually dropped.

He was previously suspended for three games his sophomore year by Shannon and benched for other reasons. All those incidents were enough to frighten away NFL teams.

“It’s a statement to his athleticism that he was able to do this, but people don’t realize all the hard work he has put in,” Gilmore said. “What he did is near impossible. He is doing the polar opposites of what a receiver and a defensive back have to do. As a defensive back you are going backwards and lateral and as a receiver you are going down the field. A lot of the negative stuff said about him was over-blown.”

After catching what is still a UM freshman record 37 passes his first year, Shield was labeled a failure. As a junior he played mostly on special teams and had just 11 receptions for 124 yards.

While most of the country looked at Shields as an underachiever, then UM defensive backs coach Wesley McGriff saw an incredible athlete who was playing the wrong position and suggested he switch positions.

At first Shields balked, but after his miniscule role in his junior year agreed. He started 10 games as a senior and his stock rose only to tumble again after the arrest.

Shunned in the draft, Shields eventually signed with Green Bay because he thought he could fill in on special teams. He won some hearts among the Packers coaches when he told them he would be willing to cover kicks and punts rather than be a returner.

“I forced a lot of fair catches,” Shields loves to tell people.

His next big break came at Green Bay when Packers defensive back Joe Whitt Jr. took him under his wing and helped him with coverage techniques and all the intricacies it takes to be an NFL cornerback,

Whitt knew he had something unique in Shields. He rated him the sixth best cornerback in last year’s draft even with only a year of experience playing the position.

“He’s the better talent of any of those three guys who went in the first round. Just talent. I am talking,” Whitt said. “He is not a better football player, but a better talent.”

Those other first round picks were no slouches and included Florida’s heralded defensive back Joe Haden, the seventh pick (the Cleveland Browns) in last year’s draft.

Packers’ defensive coordinator Dom Capers saw Shields as an unparalleled talent who would be off the charts once he learned nuances of playing cornerback in the NFL. He acknowledges Shields can do the stuff you can’t coach.

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When most people think of the late legendary Vince Lombardi they envision an iron fisted tough guy, who had little time for sympathy and centered everything on football.

But the man who coached Green Bay to the NFL’s first two Super Bowls titles had a soft side that few people knew, according to Bill Anderson.

The 1954 Manatee High graduate, who played in the first Super Bowl in 1967 with the champion Green Bay Packers, knows first-hand about Lombardi’s generosity.

“It was my first year with Green Bay and I was only in camp two weeks when my father died back home in North Carolina,” Anderson said from Tennessee where he now lives. “When I went to practice the next morning, coach Lombardi put his hand on my shoulder and said he knew how losing a dad was tough. He got me a small charter plane and as soon as practice ended told me to get on it and go home and stay as long as I wanted. He said the plane and pilot would be there as long as they need to be and would wait for me.”

A tight end, Anderson played two seasons for Green Bay. It was a great experience, but unfortunately Lombardi couldn’t do anything about the money that was being paid then compared to what the players get today.

“We got $15,000 each for being on the winning team and my salary for the season was $12,000,” Anderson said.

The average salary for an NFL tight ended today is a reported $863,414. The winners share for this year’s Super Bowl is $83,000 while the average salary for the two participating teams is $1.9 million for Green Bay and $2.0 million for Pittsburgh.

“I was lucky. It was a great experience to be part of that first Super Bowl,” said Anderson, who played in the NFL eight years after getting picked in the third round by Washington out of the University of Tennessee where he later became a broadcaster for 31 years.