THEY DON’T KNOW JACK

Jack Youngblood lives near Orlando, Fla., in a town called Winter Park, where he is a consultant for the Arena Football League and fishes and hunts and raises his son, Robert.

Robert is 16 and dabbles in football. What Robert plays, though, is soccer.

Now when the son of Jack Youngblood can grow up in Florida a soccer player, then you know football has made a terrible, terrible mistake.

“He’s growing,” said Youngblood, the former Ram defensive end, pleased. “He eats everything that doesn’t eat him first.”

That’s not all that unusual when it comes to Youngbloods. Football eats its Youngbloods.

For one, Robert isn’t playing it.

For another, Jack remains ignored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a fact that saddens him and mystifies former teammates.

The Hall’s board of selectors votes Saturday on its Class of 2000, a group that is sure to include Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott and might overlook Lynn Swann and John Stallworth.

Youngblood has been eligible for 11 years, so 10 of these Saturdays have come and gone without so much as a telephone call.

“I’m not nervous,” he said. “I’ve been through it too many times to be nervous. I certainly have an anticipation about it.”

In a 14-year career, Youngblood was selected to seven consecutive Pro Bowls, beginning in 1973. He played most of his career when sacks were not an official statistic, and before sack dances drew so much attention to them, and therefore he lacks the evidence that all-time sack leaders Reggie White and Bruce Smith possess.

“I’ll tell you what, compared to the guys that have been taken, and you hate to be negative, but the last two or three defensive ends that were inducted, there was no comparison to Jack Youngblood,” former Ram offensive guard Dennis Harrah said. “We called him, ‘The Duke of Football.’ ”

In Harrah’s view, Youngblood was better than Lee Roy Selmon and he was better than Buck Buchanan. Both are in the Hall of Fame, both elected in the last decade, while Youngblood was eligible.

“Of all the people that I played with, with [Hall of Famers] Merlin Olsen and Tom Mack and Eric Dickerson, Jack Youngblood is still number one above all of them,” Harrah said. “It’s an atrocity that he has not made it by now. No one compared to Jack.”

Youngblood loved his career. He loves the memories of it. He laughs at the joys of it, at that unexplainable Ram team that went to the Super Bowl 20 years ago, and he grieves for the defeat, still.

Something dragged him into that game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and whatever it was had very little help from Youngblood’s left leg. He broke it two games before.

The emotion remains in him. Whatever pulled him onto the field at the Rose Bowl still makes him strong.

“The reason you do those kinds of things, or attempt to do those kinds of things, it wasn’t just another football game,” Youngblood said. “It’s significant. Those opportunities to play in championship games are few and far between.

“The disappointment of losing is huge. The joy of winning is not as dramatic as the losses were, because I expected us to win. Some psychologist is going to read that and go, ‘Now that boy needs some therapy.’ But, it’s like what I’ve tried to communicate with my son, to give him some of those intellectual concepts of why we play these games. You have the opportunity to go and excel.”

Since the franchise moved from Anaheim, there are now two species of Rams.

There are these Rams, the ones who will play the Tennessee Titans on Sunday in the Super Bowl, the bob-and-weave set of St. Louis.

Then there are those Rams, the ones who played XX Super Bowls ago, those who will be thrilled to learn that the rough-and-tumble Youngblood, as of Wednesday morning, made it to his 50th birthday.

The species haven’t mixed much.

Lawrence McCutcheon continues to work for the organization. Equipment manager Todd Hewitt’s father, Don, was the old equipment manager. Former coach Jack Faulkner works as a scout.

Youngblood was a guest of the Rams in St. Louis in December. He watched his old colors defeat the New York Giants. He passed through the L.A.-St. Louis abyss and back. With a sense of the club’s new texture, with an interest in its personalities, he then watched the Rams win two playoff games.

“You get to the playoffs, to the Super Bowl, that conjures up different emotions,” Youngblood said. “You’ve been there. You know what they’re experiencing.

“The emotions of the game do not change. The people change, the cities change, but the competitive emotions of playing in those games, they don’t change.”

Their achievement warmed him some.

So it’s a big weekend for Jack Youngblood. A big weekend.

“I think we all want to be remembered for what we did,” he said. “To be considered in that elite group of players who are recognized as the best who played the game is certainly an honor. But, there’s nothing that you can say or do now to alter what the voters are going to do on Saturday. And what you did, hopefully they will remember it and remember it as being worthy.

“It is subjective. When you look at other defensive ends who have been inducted prior, you look at the hard numbers, and you do say, this is a subjective thing. Years of service, continuity, consistency. I think my numbers speak for themselves.”

Somehow, football missed Robert Youngblood. Saturday, it has a chance to make good on his old man.