Former New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey revealed the candid reason he decided to get a vasectomy at just 21 years old.
“I had no kids, I didn’t want any kids,” Shockey, 45, said on the August 2 episode of the “Club Shay Shay” podcast, adding that he only had “so much space” in his head, meaning his personal life took a backseat to his career.
The ex NFL star said he had the procedure shortly after the Giants selected him with the 14th overall pick in the 2002 NFL Draft.
“I didn’t need that emotional support,” Shockey told podcast host and former NFL tight end, Shannon Sharpe, of potentially having a family. “Listen, when we get home from work, what do you want to do? I want to sit in a hyperbaric chamber, I want to do acupuncture and I want to go to sleep. There’s only so many weeks. I had to have a schedule.”
He added, “It worked out for me. I always thought in my mind, ‘This person plays the same position as me. He’s got more catches than me. How is he married and he’s got three kids? How’s he juggling everything?’ I can’t do that. I’m a very one-lane guy.”
Shockey explained that he received his family/s blessing before obtaining the vasectomy, including his mother Lucinda’s.
“I told her, ‘Mom, I signed a contract with this team, but I don’t know. They could trade me next year. So if I’m dating a girl here, I don’t need any of this, you know? I just need to be a horse with blinders,’” Jeremy recalled telling her.
Lucinda told Jeremy he had made “a great decision,” adding that her son could “save it in the sperm bank and you’ll be fine.”
“My brother had kids, so I wasn’t yearning for that,” Jeremy further explained.
During his six seasons with the Giants from 2002 to 2007, Jeremy said he didn’t have a single girlfriend, though he admitted to having a roughly month-long casual fling with model and actress, Vida Guerra, after meeting her on a Sports Illustrated photoshoot.
Jeremy has since had the vasectomy reversed, telling Sharpe, 58, “I want kids.”
The ex NFL player was previously married to Daniela Cortazar, but he filed for divorce after eight months of marriage in 2012, saying the relationship was “irretrievably broken.”
Following his tenure with the Giants, Jeremy played three seasons with the New Orleans Saints and his final NFL season with the Carolina Panthers in 2011.
