Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, left, and Heath Shuler, who is running for Congress, greet people as they arrive at the Democratic headquarters in Hendersonville, N.C., on Aug. 22.Former University of Tennessee quarterback Heath Shuler claims he lives a boring life. He said he never did anything wrong in school that would make for an interesting article on him.

"I was also the first one to sleep and the first to wake up in the morning," Shuler said from his campaign office. "I remember as a freshman, during summer workouts, Craig Faulkner, Cliff Dutton, Cory Fleming and some of the guys were talking about what they were going to do for the weekend. Cliff said that he was just going to hang out at the crib."

"After all of the guys said what they were doing, I asked him what a crib was. They all laughed at me and told me it meant he was going home. I guess moving to Knoxville from Bryson, City, North Carolina, was a bigger adjustment than I thought it would be."

Shuler is back in North Carolina running for the U.S. Congress in the 11th district as a Democrat. The challenge he's facing in November is almost as challenging as anything he's had to deal with before. Charles Taylor, a Republican, has represented the district for 16 years.

Shuler thinks his days as a quarterback at Tennessee will help him with his political career.

"Being a quarterback taught me how to communicate with others," Shuler said. "My approach has always been to give 110 percent, work hard, do the right things and be a leader. If I'll just keep doing that, I'll be OK in office.

"When I told my dad that I was running for office, he told me I was nuts. He asked why I would want to subject myself to that kind of ridicule. I told him that somebody has to do it. Why shouldn't it be a person like me?"

Shuler says a major reason he's where he is today is because of David Cutcliffe, who coached him while at Tennessee.

"He'll never know what he did for me," Shuler said. "When I was a freshman, I thought he was teaching me football, but he was really teaching me about life.

"I was the most stubborn guy he ever dealt with, but he was pretty stubborn himself. Coach Cut always talked about tempo and he still does today. I know people hear him talk about it all the time, but I don't think they understand what it means. Tempo means that in practice, you don't rest until it's time to rest. It means that both physically and mentally you give everything you have unless it's water break or the end of practice.

"Tempo is that way you become a success in life. It's how you handle everything in your life. Tempo is how you handle your career, your family life and your faith. What he pushes quarterbacks to do is to mentally test how fast they can achieve a task correctly."

Shuler was a player who had one fear during his time to UT. He was afraid of oversleeping and having to face Cutcliffe, and face the fact that he had made a mistake.

"I remember my sophomore year, at the start of the fall workouts in August. Jerry Colquitt and I were in a battle for the starting quarterback spot. We roomed together and had a system of catching mid-day naps.

"We had the windows to our room completely taped up so that not a ray of sunlight could come in. We were both so scared of missing the afternoon practice that we both set our alarm clocks. Sure enough, we were woken up by the sound of loud banging on our door.

"The coaches had sent one of the trainers to wake us up because we had accidentally set both of our clocks to go off in the a.m., not the p.m. You should have seen the looks on Coach (Johnny) Majors, (Phillip) Fulmer and Cutcliffe as we came running out on to the field, 30 minutes late, with sleep in our eyes.

"We had to run hit-its and up-downs for a week. But, it was the look on Coach Cutcliffe's face that hurt me more than anything. He always told us to have a plan. On that day, our great plan to catch some extra sleep backfired on us."

Shuler has a very distinct plan these days, win the race for U.S. Congress in November and serve his country.