Rams Will Find Snow in Broadcast Booth This Fall : NFL: Former receiver returns to team after 16-year hiatus, this time as a radio analyst.
A long, long time ago--so long ago that Chuck Knox was in his first reign as the Rams’ head coach and a guy named Jackie Slater was a frisky rookie tackle--Jack Snow was released by the team and then retired from football.
It was 1976, Knox’s fourth Ram season, what would have been Snow’s 12th. After retiring, the popular receiver decided he’d take a shot at radio, because the analyst job on Ram games was open.
Snow lost out to Dick Bass then, which was the quiet beginning to a 16-year odyssey through the thicket of post-football life. This week, finally and officially, the journey delivered Snow back to the Rams as . . . their radio analyst for game broadcasts.
His hiring comes just in time, of course, to help usher in the second Ram stint for Knox, the man who ended Snow’s playing career.
A few days ago, Snow, 50, agreed to a two-year contract with the Rams and KMPC to do color commentary with play-by-play man Paul Olden, plus significant time on the all-sports station as a talk-show host and fill-in.
“It’s a great opportunity for me,” Snow says. “I’ve put in a lot of years in this business, and this just gives me an opportunity to do a team that I’m most familiar with, from the coaching staff and the ownership and a lot of the administrative people right down to some of the players.
“It’s kind of like when you go back to college and you walk the hallowed grounds of the stadium, memories come back. I’ve been back to Rams camp enough . . . but still, to walk through, and you see the blue and gold helmets . . . sure, it recreates some memories, a lot of happy times.”
This time, Snow is no neophyte former jock who will wander, lost, in a radio booth.
This time, Snow comes to the Rams as a seasoned national broadcaster, a respected analyst at-large who has done Rose Bowls, major college basketball and more than 100 NFL games for the Mutual Radio Network.
By doing all of those games in which he was a neutral announcer, calling the game of the week, Snow developed an objective, distinct style of delivery that impressed Len Weiner, KMPC’s program director. Where most former players find difficulty criticizing on any issue, Snow is comfortable pointing out what went wrong and why.
“First of all, he’s not afraid to tell it like it is,” Weiner says. “If he needs to criticize, he’ll do it for a reason. He has an authoritative tone to his voice and a presence that you just can’t find or concoct out of a test tube. He knows what he’s talking about and when he says it you believe him.
“A lot of teams, they put an analyst in, not locally, but (they) put an analyst in just for the namesake. What Jack does, he takes it very seriously. As seriously as he played, that’s how he broadcasts.
“Plus, he’s done this for a dozen years. That’s a major factor.”
Says Snow: “There’s just so much more to it than just sitting down and saying, ‘Oh man, what a good guy he is. Oh, he’s fun to watch.’ You’ve got to tell what’s going on down there.
“I’ve listened to teams where their announcers are homers, and I don’t like that. For instance, if Jimmy Everett drops back to pass, and he reads the wrong coverage, and he tries to force the ball in, you’ve got to say that. Conversely, if he drops back in the pocket, and he just throws one hell of a pass, you’ve got to come out of your shoes and say what a great play that was. It has to even out.”
For Snow, that means trying to relate his experiences on the football field as quickly, concisely and fairly as he can to what is occurring below him.
The Rams acquired Snow’s draft rights in 1965 after he left Notre Dame. He was a big, possession-style receiver and went on to catch 340 passes (placing him fourth on the team’s all-time list) for 6,012 total yards (third) and 45 touchdowns (second).
In the early 1970s, with Roman Gabriel at quarterback, Snow and Harold Jackson were one of the most productive receiving teams in the league.
But heading into the 1976 season, a year after losing his starting job to Ron Jessie, the Rams drafted two more receivers--Dwight Scales and Freeman Johns--and Snow, 34 at the time, saw the writing on the wall.
“Back in ‘76, when I was released, I mean, it was the best training camp I had had in about five, six years,” Snow says. “I played very, very well. But I also realized that they had drafted two young kids, and they had two seasoned veterans, Ron Jessie and Harold Jackson. . . .
“I understood that. It was a business situation, those things come and they go. I was 34, and it was time to move on.”
Snow had an offer to keep playing in the NFL, albeit for the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He strongly considered it but had reservations because his kids already had started attending school.
“I had a ticket ready to go to Tampa,” Snow says, “so I sat down with my wife and three children. I said I’m not going to Tampa alone. I said we all go as a family, or I’m going to retire. Let’s take a vote.
“Well, my oldest girl Michelle, she voted no. My son J.T., he voted no. Stephanie, my youngest girl, she said, ‘Let’s go Dad, I’ll go with you.’ Those were her exact words. ‘If they don’t want to come, that’s fine, I’ll go with you.’ My wife abstained from voting. So I said that’s it, career’s over.”
Interestingly, all three of his children are connected to sports. Michelle, 26, is married to Rex Peters, an assistant baseball coach for Chapman University. Stephanie, 23, recently landed a job in corporate sales-marketing for the Rams.
And J.T., now 24, is a left-handed hitting first baseman for the New York Yankees’ triple-A Columbus farm team, waiting his shot for the big leagues.
“When I was a player, I knew I could do it,” Snow says. “I was down there, and I knew my mother and father were proud, my wife and my kid, they were proud, nobody had ever experienced it except me.
“Now, all of a sudden, your offspring comes along, he’s on the verge of making the big time. And undoubtedly the day I sit at Yankee Stadium or wherever I get to see him play, I’m sure there will be a tear or two come into my eye because, wow, it’s just so neat.”
After retiring and not getting the Ram radio job in 1976, Snow worked in the business world a few years but was gradually pulled into a broadcast career--first doing Long Beach State games, then doing regional games for the networks, then a year working with Lindsey Nelson on CBS-TV, then to various local and regional packages with SportsChannel, then to his seven-year run with Mutual.
In between, for one year, he was the receivers coach for Ray Malavasi’s 1982 Ram team, only to be fired the next year with the rest of the staff. He never returned to coaching.
“You know when you make the move into coaching, that’s when you don’t buy a house, you rent,” Snow says. “Because you know it’s only going to be a matter of time before you move on.
“You look at Chuck Knox, for example. He has probably been to the most northeastern point (of America, Buffalo), the most northwestern point (Seattle) and one of the most southern points (Anaheim). So the guy has done a complete triangle in his professional head coaching career. And he is a winner.”
Snow decided that if broadcasting was going to be his career, he would have to work at that profession as diligently as he did football.
“Once I got involved, I realized, ‘Hey, Jack, you’ve been doing this since you’ve been 12 years old,’ ” Snow said. “ ‘You’ve been competing, it’s something you know very well, you’ve been doing it all your life. You’ve lived it, you’ve slept it, you’ve eaten it, you’ve gotten your ribs busted, your ankles broken, and you’ve caught touchdown passes and you’ve thrown blocks and you’ve had the crap knocked out of you.’ This has been my life, and it’s what I know best.
“So I said, ‘If you’re going to approach it and get into this industry and try to compete and improve, you’re going to have to work at it with at least the same work ethic you had as a player.’
“It’s not unusual for me to sit from 10 o’clock in the evening when it’s quiet, everybody’s asleep, work until four, five in the morning researching and making notes.”
KMPC and the Rams are betting that the combination of his work habits, his knowledge of the game and the Rams, and the memories he still evokes among Ram fans make him an impact performer right away.
“He has a history with the Rams,” Weiner says. “Ram fans know who he is.”