What is the aspiring young football player looking for in a role model?
Today’s answer for kids around here could easily be L’Jarius Sneed, Minden native, Crimson Tide football alumnus, product of nearby Louisiana Tech, two-time Super Bowl champion with the Kansas City Cheeeeeeeefs … and about to be set for life, from today forward, when he officially joins the Tennessee Titans as the third-highest paid cornerback in NFL history.
By most accounts, not just Sneed’s bank balance, those kids calling him a role model would be on target. Sneed has overcome some challenging circumstances, pushed through personal adversity and has already been doing some nice things for other people like taking part in a recent food distribution from the Northwest Louisiana Food Bank at Minden’s Mt. Calm Senior Hamlet, along with his volunteer work with the Boys & Girls Club in Kansas City. Expect more of that from him. Mama Sneed raised him right.
There will be nine young role models celebrated Thursday night at East Ridge Country Club, Class of 2024 high school seniors saluted by the North Louisiana S.M. McNaughton Chapter of the National Football Foundation and presented $1,000 college scholarships. They have been exceptional scholar-athletes at their schools, outstanding football players on Friday nights, and have been involved with school and community service activities.
Also to be honored, briefly, as that’s all he would tolerate: the memory of Shreveporter Leo Sanford, for many years the president of the McNaughton Chapter, and for all of its 44 years, a board member who wrangled money for those scholarships year after year, because those young people deserved something extra special for being extraordinary. Mr. Sanford crossed the ultimate goalline at midnight last Thursday, age 94.
A week later, nine young men will receive the latest fruits of Leo’s labor. What he didn’t do himself, he inspired others to do. Step back and consider how many dozens of big boys received scholarships from the NFF’s McNaughton Chapter because Leo, Bobby Aillet, Milton McNaughton, Tony Sardisco, Orvis Sigler, Bob Griffin and others made it possible since 1980.
Playing in the NFL wasn’t always the glory ride it is today. Pro football took a back seat to big league baseball, horse racing and boxing until Sanford’s last game. After making two Pro Bowls with the Chicago Cardinals, he captured an NFL championship with the 1958 Baltimore Colts.
Sanford played in the NFL for eight seasons, in an era when players had off-season jobs to make ends meet.
Following a stellar career at Louisiana Tech, he was a sixth-round selection of the Chicago Cardinals in the 1951 NFL Draft. By then he had taken a job with Pan Am Southern Oil Company in New Orleans, making $275 a month. Several weeks after the draft, Sanford got a standard NFL contract in the mail. If he made the team, he would be paid $5,000 for the season. He did the math, and he and wife Myrna charted a course for Chicago.
After seven seasons, he was traded to Baltimore, who had a young quarterback named Johnny Unitas. As a center and linebacker, and snapper for kicks, Sanford helped Baltimore reach the 1958 title game. In the second quarter, he tore up his right knee, but still managed to limp out to handle deep snaps – including his last one, producing a 20-yard field goal with seven seconds to go in regulation to tie the favored New York Giants at 17-all.
As the game in Yankee Stadium went to overtime, it stalled the start of the Sunday evening primetime TV lineup on CBS. Viewers who had never given the NFL a look saw a thrilling championship game won by the Colts 23-17.
Sanford couldn’t come back from the injury. He got a job back home selling sporting goods, and a few years later joined Jostens’ as a salesman, selling senior rings to high schoolers around the Ark-La-Tex. More people knew him in that role than they did for his NFL career.
Conversely, Sneed will begin his fifth NFL season in September, with all the means needed to live the rest of his life more than just comfortably.
His rookie contract from the 2020 NFL Draft paid him $5.5 million through the recent Super Bowl. That surely makes him the most prosperous former student who was walking the Tech campus in 2020, and for quite a few years before and certainly since.
That contract expired after the Chiefs won the Super Bowl early last month. It was his third appearance in the NFL’s championship game in four seasons as a pro.
Today, Sneed will sign a four-year deal, worth $76 million, with $55 million guaranteed. No decimal between the fives. Generational wealth.
Soaking in the positive influences he’s had, and with Mama Sneed as a guiding light, L’Jarius Sneed’s trajectory is soaring.
A young man who played in The Pit for the Crimson Tide under the Friday night lights has earned this quantum leap with skill, tenacity, and by maximizing opportunities. Along the way he’s dodged trouble, evaded negativity, dealt with tragedy, and overcome immense odds.
He won’t have an offseason job, unless he wants to start his own business, thanks to an NFL that traces its prominence and profits to Leo Sanford and his Colts teammates. In 2019, that 1958 championship contest was voted the greatest game in the league’s history. It transformed the American sports landscape.
Sanford didn’t get to cash in on his football career. But through his support of his beloved alma mater, his involvement with the McNaughton Chapter honoring remarkable scholar-athletes, his contributions to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and how he lived a servant-leader’s life, he turned his football days into another kind of generational wealth.
In much different, and more profound ways for the greater good, we all have been blessed with Leo Sanford among us, the epitome of a role model.
Where he sits today, I’m sure he’s cheering for Minden’s favorite son, and a fellow Tech Bulldog, L’Jarius Sneed.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com