Football career

Shaw was born in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, where, as a high school football quarterback, he led Grant High School to back-to-back state football championships in 1946 and 1947. Shaw also played basketball and baseball for Grant and was inducted into the Portland Interscholastic League

Portland Interscholastic League

The Portland Interscholastic League is a high school athletic conference in Portland, Oregon that is a member of the Oregon School Activities Association . It consists of high schools in the Portland Public Schools district...

 Hall of Fame in 2005.

Shaw played college baseball and football for Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, and was the starting

Starting lineup

A starting lineup in sports is an official list of the set of players who will actively participate in the event when the game begins. The players in the starting lineup are commonly referred to as starters, whereas the others are substitutes or bench players.The starters are commonly the best...

 quarterback for the 1948 season. Shaw was the backup to Gary Kerkorian

Gary Kerkorian

Gary Ray Kerkorian was an Armenian-American football quarterback who played four seasons in the National Football League.-College career:...

 for the 1949 and 1950 seasons. (Kerkorian, in turn, would become the backup to Shaw's younger brother George for the NFL's Baltimore Colts

History of the Indianapolis Colts

The Indianapolis Colts are a professional football team based in Indianapolis, Indiana. They play in the AFC South division of the National Football League. They have won 3 NFL championships and 2 Super Bowls....

in 1955.)