Football Across Minnesota: Randy Shaver still drawn to the Friday Night Lights

FOOTBALL ACROSS MINNESOTA | Week 4

It’s a Friday night with the kind of sky that appears on postcards and Randy Shaver is doing exactly what he wants to be doing three months into his retirement from TV broadcasting.

He’s working.

“Look at me,” he says, chuckling as he drives north on Interstate 35 to his next stop at another high school football game. “I’m retired, right? That’s what my wife says to me: ‘What are you doing?’”

Yeah, she’s right. This doesn’t look like retirement. Shaver should be putting a tee into the ground or perfecting his pickleball serve.

He will get there eventually — he and wife Roseann have a seven-week getaway booked for Florida this winter — but fall Friday nights in Minnesota are deeply personal to Shaver.

He gives his heart, and his time, to covering and promoting high school football.

That passion carried him through 41 years as a KARE 11 sports and news anchor, and not even retirement will interfere with his devotion to prep football.

Since retiring, he started a weekly podcast called Shaver Prep Football Podcast that appears on the Talk North network and YouTube. He hosts a pregame show called Game Night Live that is livestreamed from a marquee matchup each week. He visits schools throughout the week to record interviews and catch up with coaches. He stopped by six schools in one day during training camp.

His association with Tackle Cancer, the statewide fundraising initiative created by Hall of Fame coach Dave Nelson to honor Shaver, a cancer survivor, has strengthened his connection to the high school football community.

“That’s one reason why that relationship is so special for me,” Shaver says.

He also just loves high school football. His influence on Minnesota football is beyond measure.

His “Prep Sports Extra” highlights show on Friday nights aired for 40 years, starting in 1984. Shaver delivered something that nobody else was doing at the time: a show dedicated solely to high school football.

Multiple generations of players shared the same Friday night routine: come home after games and turn on Shaver’s show to watch highlights and hear scores from around the state.

“To be honest, the formula never changed,” he says. “My goal was for high school football to feel like its own ‘SportsCenter.’ Give me the scores, give me the highlights, tell me what it means.”

At the height of Preps Sports Extra, he dispatched eight TV crews every Friday to games around the metro and beyond. He recalled in amazement a playoff game between Stillwater and Moorhead.

Shaver really wanted video footage but sending a crew to Moorhead by car wasn’t a realistic option. The news director offered an idea: Why not rent a plane and fly there?

“This is no lie,” Shaver says, laughing. “We rented a single-engine plane at Flying Cloud, put a photographer in it, flew him to Moorhead to shoot the first half, get back in the plane, fly back to Flying Cloud, our live truck was sitting at Flying Cloud to send us the video and we got it on the show.”

He shakes his head.

“Can you imagine even thinking of doing that today?” he says.

Shaver made a request after being promoted to news anchor in 2012: He wanted to keep doing Prep Sports Extra. The show had become a labor of love. Shaver’s task every Friday was to chase down scores around the state while producers and photographers loaded the highlights.

“At 10:14, I would grab my scripts, go on the set and wing it,” he said. “I would hold the sheet up, watch the highlights and just go back and forth. I’m watching it as you’re watching it for the first time. It was the greatest adrenaline rush.”

That rush was so intense that co-workers jokingly reminded each other that they were friends and liked each other at the start of the shift.

“Because once things get going and it’s crunch time,” Shaver says, “there is a lot of yelling and screaming going back and forth.”

Did he ever stop and ask himself if it was worth it?

“No, I never had those nights,” Shaver says. “But there were some nights where I wanted to cry.”

His shift didn’t end after the final highlight. Shaver stayed at the station until 3:30 a.m. logging all the video from the night for future reference.

The adrenaline rush made the long hours “so much fun,” he says.

The 65-year-old Shaver retired from broadcasting in late June. He says he hasn’t missed the work even for a second. He’s been busy, though there has been an adjustment.

He wore a hat and sunglasses to a game earlier this season. A worker tapped him on the shoulder and asked for his media affiliate.

“I thought to myself, what do I say?” he says, laughing. “I was caught off guard. I was flabbergasted for a second.”

On this gorgeous Friday night in September, Shaver begins at Lakeville South where he hosts this week’s pregame show before the Battle of Lakeville against North. Coaches of both teams stop by for an interview before warmups.

Shaver signs off at 6:30 p.m., then makes his way to the parking lot.

East Ridge is hosting a Tackle Cancer game in the east metro and presenting a check to Shaver at halftime. Tackle Cancer has raised more than $3.5 million since its inception in 2012. The money benefits the Randy Shaver Cancer Research and Community Fund.

Shaver arrives at East Ridge late in the first quarter. He takes pictures of the East Ridge student section and waves to fans cheering his name. The school honors him on the field at halftime.

“Isn’t this a perfect night for high school football?” he says, taking in the scene before the ceremony.

For Randy Shaver, even in retirement, that statement holds true every Friday night.

. . .

FOOTBALL + FAMILY

High school football players often are just assigned a jersey number. Or they pick one out of thin air, or honor a favorite pro. And sometimes, there’s a deeper story behind their number. That certainly is the case under center in North Branch. There, No. 14 is associated with the Robillard family and playing quarterback.

The family’s history with No. 14 began with Greg Robillard, a Minneapolis Edison quarterback in the 1980s. Robillard’s brother, James, is 10 years younger and idolized him, so he chose No. 14 when he played for DeLaSalle.

James and wife Amy have five kids, including three boys — Aaron, Samuel and Jacob — up in North Branch. Once the boys got involved in football, their number choice was easy.

Said Aaron, the oldest son: “I chose to wear No. 14 when I was young because my dad told me that it was the number he wore when he played quarterback. I thought that was cool, so I decided to play quarterback and wear 14 as well.”

Said Samuel, next in line: “I originally chose it in third grade because my older brother was No. 14 and I wanted to be like him and my dad. But as I got older it became more than that. It may sound strange to have a number mean so much to me, but it does. It symbolizes our family and who we want to be as football players and people.”

Said Jacob: “I chose No. 14 because my whole family wore that number. My dad, brothers and uncle all wore it in football. I feel like as the youngest in the family I had to carry on the legacy.”

Dad James serves as president of the North Branch youth football association. The Robillards also home-schooled their children until high school. Football and school lessons occasionally collided.

“We’ve got a lot of whiteboards that we used to use for math and whatever else,” James said. “You would see pictures on there, ‘Oh, we’re doing history.’ In the background, you would see a [football play] ‘Trips right, sweep.’ Just the four of us standing around talking about different plays or different defenses.”

All three boys played quarterback growing up. Aaron led North Branch to the section finals as a senior in 2017. Samuel switched to fullback in high school and helped North Branch make its first state tournament appearance in school history in 2022. Jacob led North Branch back to the state tournament last season and helped the Vikings record their first tournament win in school history. North Branch is 4-1 this season with Jacob as senior quarterback.

“It has been pretty cool to see my brothers go through the same program that I did,” Aaron said. “All of us playing quarterback growing up, captains of the high school team, and leading successful football teams. North Branch football has changed so much from when I entered high school in 2014 to where it is now. To go from struggling to win games, to the section championship in 2017, to a perennial section powerhouse and back-to-back state tournament teams in the last 10 years is a pretty remarkable turnaround.”

. . .

WEEKEND REWIND

The five best things we saw on social media this weekend:

“That’s not a usual Division III talent making the throw.”

— St. John’s receiver Riley Schwellenbach on catching passes from his quarterback Aaron Syverson, one of the best players nationally at the Division III level.

. . .

UP NEXT

Vikings vs. N.Y. Jets, 8:30 a.m., Sunday, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London. Aaron Rodgers is no longer the Packers quarterback, but any matchup between him and the Vikings defense is appointment viewing. Set your alarm.

. . .

DAILY DELIVERY + FAM

Each week this season, my colleague Michael Rand and I will review a few FAM topics together and post our chat to YouTube. This week, we talked about Randy Shaver’s dedication to covering Minnesota high school football in retirement. Watch our video right here.

. . .

A FAM FINAL WORD

The Vikings are 4-0. The Timberwolves traded Karl-Anthony Towns. The Twins completed an epic collapse to miss the playoffs. The Lynx are in the WNBA semifinals. The Gophers nearly pulled off a stunning comeback at the Big House. There are a lot of emotions tied up in that paragraph.

. . .

Thank you for reading Football Across Minnesota (FAM), my weekly column that tours football topics in our state from preps to pros. I’ll publish this column on Tuesday mornings. I appreciate feedback, so please reach out anytime. Thanks again — Chip (@chipscoggins on X; email me at anthony.scoggins@startribune.com)

. . .

Want more Football Across Minnesota? Chip’s previous columns are here: