By AP/KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Former Rams receiver and current broadcaster Jack Snow is in critical condition at Barnes-Jewish Hospital with a staph infection.
Snow, 62, became ill in November, according to Rams spokesman Duane Lewis. He was getting better but was hospitalized last week.
Lewis says Snow's family was with him at the hospital. Snow's son is San Francisco Giants first baseman J.T. Snow, who is believed to be among them.
Jack Snow was a color analyst on the Rams' radio broadcasts even before the team moved to St. Louis 10 years ago. He was last in the booth Nov. 20 during a home loss to Arizona; he's missed the past five games.
The Rams play their season finale Sunday night in Dallas.
Snow has been part of the Rams virtually since being drafted out of Notre Dame in 1965. He spent 11 years as a player with the team when it was in Los Angeles, retiring in 1975.
He was selected to the Pro Bowl in 1967 and still is among the team leaders in several receiving categories.
Staph bacteria are a common cause of skin infections. Healthy people might carry the bacteria on their skin and in their noses. Still, the germ can cause serious surgical-wound infections, bloodstream infections and pneumonia.
Lewis did not know how Snow got the infection, most common among those who live in close proximity to others, which can include sports teams. In fact, the Rams had an outbreak of the infections in 2003.
Five members of the team developed drug-resistant infections after sustaining turf burns, and two or three members of the San Francisco 49ers developed infections after playing the Rams early that season.
The outbreak was the subject of an article earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine. The players were not identified.
In August, then-linebackers coach Joe Vitt was hospitalized for three days with a staph infection in his left hand. Vitt has served as interim head coach since October, when Mike Martz stepped aside because of endocarditis, a bacterial infection of the lining of the heart.