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Cecil Shorts

American football player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ3664093 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cecil Carlon Shorts III (born December 22, 1987) is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL). He attended Collinwood High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and later played college football for the Mount Union Purple Raiders football team. He was selected by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the fourth round of the 2011 NFL draft.

Early life

Shorts attended Collinwood High School in Cleveland, Ohio, where he played quarterback on the football team that his father, Cecil Shorts, Jr., coached.

College career

During his freshman season at the University of Mount Union, Shorts suffered an injury that kept him from playing the entire year. In 2007, he was the backup quarterback, along with Kurt Rocco, to Greg Micheli, but was 16 of 24 passing for 209 yards, made 12 receptions, three for a touchdown, for 289 and ran for 108 yards with two touchdowns in 14 games played. Shorts switched to wide receiver after Pierre Garçon graduated, and immediately became the top receiver for Mount Union. In 2008, Shorts caught 77 passes for 1,484 yards and 23 touchdowns, which set an Ohio Athletic Conference record. Shorts helped Mount Union win their 10th NCAA Division III National Championship, at Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl XXXVI.

In 2009, he was named the D3Football.com National Offensive Player of the Year after recording 100 receptions for 1,736 yards with 19 touchdowns. For his efforts, he earned Associated Press first-team Little All-America honors following the season.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cecil Shorts” is american football player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cecil, Shorts and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 2011, 2007, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1987-12-22. For this dossier, Cecil, Shorts and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american football player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3664093. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 2011, 2007 and 2008.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cecil Shorts”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cecil Shorts primary sources, Cecil Shorts archive and Cecil research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cecil Shorts”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cecil Shorts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.