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, as of Wednesday.
By most accounts, not just Sneed’s bank balance, they’d be on target. Sneed has overcome some rocky influences, 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 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 is a dream come true. Leo lived that life in the 1950s, making two Pro Bowls, winning an NFL championship in his last pro game, with the 1958 Baltimore Colts.
Being in the NFL, then and now, is a business, a short-term opportunity. It’s said NFL stands for “Not For Long.”
Sanford made it for eight seasons, in an era when players had off-season jobs to make ends meet. Sneed will begin his fifth season in September, with all the means needed to live the rest of his life more than just comfortably.
The numbers boggle the mind. Not just today’s salaries, but the odds.
Only 1.6 percent of college players make it and earn a regular-season NFL paycheck. If you go back to the high school ranks, the chances are that 0.23 percent of boys playing on Friday night get to play on Sunday afternoons.
Once in the league, an average NFL career lasts 3.3 years.
While the glory of being a pro player is significant, the opportunity to earn extraordinary income sufficient for a lifetime is obviously fleeting. The chance to obtain generational wealth by playing in the NFL is even more rare.
Chosen in the fourth round of the 2020 NFL Draft, Sneed has been playing on a four-year rookie contract worth $3.9 million that with incentives and postseason pay expanded to $5.5 million. 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 second Super Bowl triumph with Kansas City, in his third appearance in the NFL’s championship game in four seasons as a pro.
Sneed is 27 years old, the average age for an NFL player. There are 1,696 men playing for 32 teams in the NFL at the start of each season. Only a few dozen are elite. Sneed joins those ranks, financially speaking, Wednesday.
The Chiefs recognized his current value when they applied a “franchise tag” on him last month, locking him in on a $19.8 million salary for 2024 with hopes to work out a long-term deal. However, much of Kansas City’s salary pool is already obligated to quarterback Patrick Mahomes, defensive tackle Chris Jones and tight end Travis Kelce. Contracts for Jones and Sneed expired after the Super Bowl, and Kansas City made keeping the building block of their interior defense their priority, signing Jones to a $158 million deal last month.
Sneed emerged as one of the NFL’s top cornerbacks in the 2023 season, according to Pro Football Focus and other NFL media outlets, on the heels of a very impressive 2022 campaign.
He’s about to sign a new four-year deal, worth $76 million, with $55 million guaranteed, according to multiple NFL sources. The deal will make him the third-highest paid cornerback in the league, all-time, and the 53rd-best paid player in the NFL – for now – according to Sportrac, a sports business news source.
The Chiefs were unwilling to match what some competitors were willing to pay Sneed, and he directed his agent to explore options. Along with Tennessee, Indianapolis was an ardent suitor for his talents. The devil was in the details – Kansas City justifiably wanted compensation in draft picks.
The deal struck, to be executed Wednesday following a required physical exam, is for a 2024 seventh-rounder and a 2025 third-round pick, per ESPN NFL analyst Adam Schefter.
NFL analyst Jeff Howe of The Athletic gave Tennessee a grade of “A” and saddled Kansas City with an “F” for the deal, with a headline “Titans win big; what were Chiefs thinking?”
As for Sneed’s soon-to-be former teammates, Jones probably summed up their perspective with a brief message on X: “@jay__sneed blessings brotha,” he Tweeted.
Indeed.
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.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com
