This week, former NFL star with the Los Angeles Rams, Jack Snow, father of San Francisco Giants first baseman J. T. Snow, called into a sports radio show on station KFNS-590 AM. Snow hosts a weekly show on the same station. Snow read the riot act to muckraker Kevin Slaten over Slaten’s belittling of the St. Louis Rams.
While the Rams have done much to deserve criticism this season, Snow was right in two ways.
First, Snow rightly holds that, however the Rams made it, they made it. They’re in the playoffs with better-than-even chances of defeating the Seattle Seahawks and advancing to round two. This team had numerous opportunities to pack it in this season, but they didn’t. Mike Martz seems to have figured out that rookie running back Steven Jackson is the real deal, that Marshall Faulk just isn’t the everyday player he was two years ago, and that the Rams can still execute the long, wild passing game made famous in 1999-2001.
Second, he is so right to defend his team. Snow has been a Ram since graduating from Notre Dame. He is one of the franchise’s all-time great wide receivers with 340 catches for 6,012 yards and 45 touchdowns. That’s an average of almost 18 yards per catch. We need men like Snow who defend their teams. Snow may be retired, but he’s as much a Ram today as he was in 1971. He exemplifies the football mentality that Brother Mike Barber instilled in me at St. Mary’s High School. “This is football,” he’d scream as we chased bouncing balls on the brick and glass field on Grand Avenue in South St. Louis.
Jack Snow is football. Kevin Slaten should thank God there are still men who stand for things. While a football team may seems like a frivilous thing to stand for, most men these stand for far less and put up with a lot more.