Shawn Michael Oakman (born April 7, 1992) is a

Canadian football Canadian football () is a team sport, sport played in Canada in which two teams of 12 players each compete for territorial control of a field of play long and wide attempting to advance a pointed oval-shaped ball into the opposing team's sco ...

defensive end Defensive end (DE) is a defensive position in the sport of gridiron football. This position has designated the players at each end of the defensive line, but changes in formation (American football), formations over the years have substantially ...

for the

Toronto Argonauts The Toronto Argonauts (officially the Toronto Argonaut Football Club and colloquially known as the Argos) are a professional Canadian football team competing in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL), based in Toronto, Ontario ...

of the

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...

(CFL). He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

for the Baylor Bears. Oakman has been a member of the Triangle Torch and the

West Virginia Roughriders The West Virginia Roughriders are a professional indoor football team based in Wheeling, West Virginia. They were founded in 2016 as the Richmond Roughriders and played at the Richmond Coliseum in 2017 and 2018. They were members the Arena Pro ...

of the

American Arena League The American Arena League (AAL) is a professional indoor football minor league that began playing in 2018. The league was initiated by a merger between Arena Pro Football (APF) and the Can-Am Indoor Football League (Can-Am), although the AAL on ...

, the

Bismarck Bucks The Bismarck Bucks are an indoor American football team based in Bismarck, North Dakota. The Bucks joined Champions Indoor Football (CIF) as an expansion team in 2016, and began play for the 2017 season. The team moved to the Indoor Football Lea ...

Champions Indoor Football Champions Indoor Football (CIF) is a professional indoor American football minor league created in 2014 out of the merger between the Champions Professional Indoor Football League (CPIFL) and Lone Star Football League (LSFL), plus one team fr ...

, and the

Los Angeles Wildcats Los Angeles Wildcats is a name shared by several American football teams from Los Angeles: *Los Angeles Wildcats (AFL) The Los Angeles Wildcats (also reported in various media as Pacific Coast Wildcats, Los Angeles Wilson Wildcats and Wilson's ...

of the

XFL XFL may refer to: Sports * XFL (2001), a defunct American football league that played its only season in 2001 * XFL (2020), a professional American football league Vehicles * Bell XFL Airabonita, a 1940 U.S. Navy experimental interceptor aircra ...

Early years

Oakman attended Penn Wood High School in

Lansdowne, Pennsylvania Lansdowne is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, located southwest of the Center City Philadelphia. It was named for the Marquess of Lansdowne. As of the 2010 census the borough had a population of 10,620. Lansdowne grew quickly in the ...

. He played both football and

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

. He committed to play

Penn State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State became ...

in July 2010.

College career

Penn State University

Oakman was

redshirted Redshirt, in United States college athletics, is a delay or suspension of an athlete's participation in order to lengthen their period of eligibility. Typically, a student's athletic eligibility in a given sport is four seasons, aligning with the ...

as a true

freshman A freshman, fresher, first year, or frosh, is a person in the first year at an educational institution, usually a secondary school or at the college and university level, but also in other forms of post-secondary educational institutions. Ara ...

PSU PSU may refer to: Organizations Military *Police Support Unit, a paramilitary wing of the Zimbabwe Republic Police *Port Security Unit, a U.S. Coast Guard expeditionary force protection unit Political parties * Parti Socialiste Unifié (disambig ...

in 2011. On February 27, 2012, Penn State announced that Oakman had been dismissed from the Nittany Lions football team for an unspecified violation of team rules. (See

Personal life Personal life is the course or state of an individual's life, especially when viewed as the sum of personal choices contributing to one's personal identity. Apart from hunter-gatherers, most pre-modern peoples' time was limited by the need to ...

.) Oakman transferred to

Baylor University Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the fir ...

in July 2012.

Baylor University

As per

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

transfer rules, Oakman took the entire 2012 season off. Oakman played in 13 games as a backup defensive end in 2013. He recorded 33 tackles and two sacks. In his first year as a starter, Oakman had a breakout season in 2014. He finished the season with 25.5 tackles for loss and 11.0 sacks. He earned third-team All-America honors from the Associated Press and was a consensus All-Big 12 selection. Oakman was projected by some analysts and scouts to be a first round pick in the

2015 NFL Draft The 2015 NFL Draft was the 80th annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible football players. It took place in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre and in Grant Park, from April 30 to May 2. The previous ...

. Instead of declaring for the draft, he decided to return to Baylor for his senior season. In 2015, Oakman was not able to match his successful 2014 season. He recorded only 4.5 sacks in 2015.

Professional career

Several early mock drafts projected Oakman to be a first round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. Chris Burke of ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...

'' penciled in Oakman as the first overall pick in his "2016 NFL Mock Draft 1.0," which was published a few days after the conclusion of the 2015 NFL Draft. Oakman's production dropped in 2015 and his draft stock fell throughout the season. One AFC area scout commented that he would not select Oakman in the first three rounds of the draft. Some of the concerns about Oakman were his skinny lower body, lack of pass-rush technique, and "inconsistent motor chasing plays and inability to make plays against better competition." After Oakman's arrest on a sexual assault charge, which occurred only two weeks before the 2016 NFL Draft, an NFC executive told Lance Zierlein of

NFL.com The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

that Oakman was "undraftable now" because the case is unlikely to be resolved before the start of the draft. Zierlein believed the arrest would likely result in Oakman being removed from all NFL team boards. Oakman went undrafted in the 2016 NFL Draft. After the draft, he wasn't expected to get signed as an undrafted free agent due to the legal issues he was facing at the time. He was subsequently found not guilty of the alleged sexual assault.

Triangle Torch

In November 2017, Oakman signed with the Triangle Torch of the

Bismarck Bucks

On March 8, 2018 Oakman signed with the

. On April 6, 2019, Oakman signed with

The Spring League The Spring League was an American football developmental league and scouting event (pro showcase) that played from 2017 to 2021 and was founded by Brian Woods. Aimed at professional athletes but not paying a salary or expenses, the league's go ...

and was assigned to the Austin Generals.

West Virginia Roughriders

In June 2019, Shawn Oakman signed with the

of the American Arena League.

XFL

Los Angeles Wildcats

On October 16, 2019, Oakman was drafted to the

of the

. He was waived on December 17, 2019. The Wildcats re-signed Oakman on January 24, 2020. In his debut game, Oakman had a sack and a pass deflected. He had his contract terminated when the league suspended operations on April 10, 2020.

Canadian Football League

Toronto Argonauts

On February 15, 2021, Oakman signed with the

of the

. Oakman also played in

Fan Controlled Football Fan Controlled Football (FCF) is a professional 7-on-7 Indoor football league created in 2017 as the first sports league controlled by fans. All games are played at the Pullman Yards in Atlanta, Georgia and broadcast on Twitch, NBCLX, DAZN, ...

as a late addition to the roster in March

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

, appearing in the People's Championship.

Personal life

On February 25, 2012, Oakman was involved in an incident at a Penn State dining hall, and was eventually charged by PSU police with

disorderly conduct Disorderly conduct is a crime in most jurisdictions in the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan. Typically, "disorderly conduct" makes it a crime to be drunk in public, to " disturb the peace", or to loiter in certain are ...

harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral ...

, and

retail theft Shoplifting is the theft of goods from an open retail establishment, typically by concealing a store item on one's person, in pockets, under clothes or in a bag, and leaving the store without paying. With clothing, shoplifters may put on items ...

. According to police, Oakman fled the scene after shoving a cashier who refused to return his student ID over unpaid items. In a later interview, Oakman stated that the cashier withheld his ID after she found that there were no points on his meal card and that he had only grabbed her wrist to retrieve it and return to his dorm room. According to Oakman, this incident led to his dismissal from the Penn State football team by then head coach Bill O'Brien. Oakman was named in a January 2013 Waco police incident report alleging he physically assaulted a woman. According to the report, Oakman grabbed the alleged victim under her armpits and shoved her into brick walls and cabinets at her South Waco apartment. The alleged incident was about six months after Oakman enrolled at Baylor after being kicked off the football team at Penn State University for physically assaulting a female cashier who reportedly tried to stop him from stealing food from a campus store. On April 13, 2016, Oakman was arrested in Waco and charged after a woman accused him of sexual assault. According to a police affidavit, Oakman met the accuser at a bar and asked if she wanted to go to his off-campus residence. They walked to Oakman's duplex where, according to the woman, he forced her into a bedroom, forcibly removed her clothes, forced her onto the bed, and sexually assaulted her. On July 20, 2016, a grand jury in

McLennan County McLennan County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in Central Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 260,579 . Its county seat and largest city is Waco. The U.S. census 2021 county population estimate is 263,115. The county i ...

indicted Oakman on charges of second-degree felony sexual assault. The trial of the case began February 26, 2019. On February 28, 2019, after the jury deliberated for 45 minutes, Oakman was found not guilty of sexual assault.

In popular culture

At the

Cotton Bowl Classic The Cotton Bowl Classic (also known as the Cotton Bowl) is an American college football bowl game that has been held annually in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex since January 1, 1937. The game was originally played at its namesake stadium i ...

on January 1, 2015, a picture of Oakman on the jumbotron at

AT&T Stadium AT&T Stadium, formerly Cowboys Stadium, is a retractable roof, retractable-roof stadium in Arlington, Texas, United States. It serves as the home of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL), and was completed on May 27, 2009. I ...

went viral across social media, including social media site

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. The image became "an internet sensation" overnight because of his intimidating build, with Oakman standing at .

References

External links

Toronto Argonauts bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oakman, Shawn 1992 births Living people Players of American football from Philadelphia Players of Canadian football from Philadelphia American football defensive ends Penn State Nittany Lions football players Baylor Bears football players Triangle Torch players Bismarck Bucks players Los Angeles Wildcats (XFL) players People acquitted of sex crimes Toronto Argonauts players Internet memes introduced in 2015