Editor’s note:This is one part ofThe Athletic’s buffet of stories on food and college football, The Spread.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The thick clouds of black smoke stirred questions in Shannon Snell’s mind. What was his grandfather doing for all those hours, equipped with mop sauce in the backyard of a south Tampa home near the railroad tracks roosting raccoons? And there was that old big barrel smoker. It was beat up, rusty, ugly. How could such goodness secrete from that thing?
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Never mind. Salivation doesn’t allow much space for the brain to seek answers. As a young kid watching the scene unfold, Snell at least knew what mattered most. His grandfather only cooked ribs. So the clouds, the smoke, the hours spent outside, it all meant the ribs were coming. Oh, boy, the ribs were coming.
“The only thing I knew was that when he brought them in, they were incredible,” Snell said. “So I became a rib guy at a really young age. Seven years old, I was a rib guy. Every birthday that I had, I would ask my mom, ‘Hey, can I get some ribs?’ ”
For years, Snell, a former All-American offensive lineman for the Florida Gators, was a football player who happened to be a barbecue lover. But he doesn’t become a pitmaster, an ambassador for Sonny’s BBQ in Gainesville and the culinary artist behind the Gators’ “Relationship Ribs” if not for the reverse becoming true.
Lee Davis Begley wanted, as Snell recently recalled, “a badass spread.”
In April 2018, head coach Dan Mullen and his staff were in the introductory stages of building relationships with recruits. Mullen was just hired five months earlier and first needed to secure a 2018 recruiting class — among all his other duties — while trying to catch up on 2019, 2020 and 2021 recruits. He wasn’t recruiting these same high-profile players at Mississippi State, his previous stop. So in spring 2018, Davis Begley, Florida’s director of recruiting operations, decided the Gators would have a “Gators Grill Out,” a recruiting event inside the school’s indoor practice facility designed to help the staff learn more about invited recruits.
They needed the right caterer. Eventually, Davis Begley called one of the Sonny’s BBQ locations in Gainesville. At the time, Snell was a general manager and happened to be at the store that day. From 2001-03, he was the Gators’ starting left guard. Unlike some of Florida’s most recent former coaches, Mullen has opened his program to former Gators. The match was ideal. But not only because Snell used to wear orange and blue.
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“They didn’t want hamburgers and hot dogs, that was too basic,” Snell said. “They wanted a spread that was going to make people talk and kind of remember what it was. That got my wheels turning.”
Snell treated the assignment as if he was competing in the Florida BBQ Association.
Snell cooked 100 pounds of brisket. There were the specialty items like jalapeño sausages with cheddar in them. “Pork, cheddar and jalapeño,” Snell said. “I don’t know how you can go wrong with that three.” He spent five hours perfecting taste and texture for 125 pounds of ribs.
It was the ribs that caught attention.
On Twitter, Corry Knowles of the Big3RollUp podcast started using a hashtag: #RelationshipRibs. Hundreds of tweets from others have since included the hashtag. To Florida fans on social media, Snell and “Relationship Ribs” are synonymous.
“That’s one hell of a phrase,” Snell said.
#RelationshipRibs in full effect pic.twitter.com/f47iTA2mZU
— Mr. Snell (@theebigbossSS) May 18, 2019
In May, Florida held its second “Gators Grill Out.” There was no need for Davis Begley to make any cold calls. Snell and his ribs were back, and this time he pushed himself to include nearly 500 pounds of smoked meatballs, too.
“I had to live up to the Gator standard of making sure I produce the best barbecue I could to have these guys buzzing,” Snell said. “I wanted to do my part to help them. If I didn’t and I was just a run-of-the-mill guy who didn’t provide a quality experience, I don’t think I would have been helping them in any kind of way.”
“When I look for a caterer, I don’t want to have to worry if they are going to have enough food, if they are going to be there on time and what they are going to have set up,” Davis Begley said. “With him, because he gets it and he has a football background, I can call him the day before and he gets it done. He’s there, everything looks great and the food tastes good.”
Unlike his grandfather’s preferred apparatus, Snell showed at the indoor practice facility with a Sonny’s BBQ van and pristine grill the size of a small car with grilling shelves in tow. The smoke and what that smoke meant, however, were the same.
— Mr. Snell (@theebigbossSS) May 19, 2018
“It’s funny because he cooks the ribs during the grill out, and he does it on-site,” Davis Begley said. “So, one of the kids was like, ‘I knew these didn’t taste like regular Sonny’s ribs.’ Because they were that special.”
Of course someone would say that; Snell isn’t one to settle.
Snell played his final snap of football in 2007 with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Denver Broncos originally signed him as an undrafted rookie in 2004. He also spent time with the Vikings and Cowboys. After a couple of years, the former Parade All-American at Hillsborough High School in Tampa no longer saw a point in playing football. His shoulder was injured, but that wasn’t the real reason he quit. He looked at his job as an offensive lineman for what it was on the simplest level: a 6-feet-6, 320-pound man continuously banging into another brute. The sport was no longer fun.
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Snell’s father, Ray Snell, is a former NFL offensive lineman, too. The Tampa Buccaneers made Ray Snell the No. 22 overall pick of the 1980 draft and gave him a $100,000 bonus. His father’s money wasn’t enough and it went quick, Shannon Snell said. Ray Snell suffered a blowout fracture in his right eye while playing and suffered symptoms from the injury ever since. By 1986, he was out of the league.
Growing up playing football, Snell repeatedly heard a message from his father about the game: “Don’t make this a long-term deal. Get in. Get out. Make money. Then find out what you really want to do.”
Snell’s family struggled, he said. His parents divorced when he was young. As he put it, every day wasn’t bad, but every day wasn’t great, either. He lived with his brother and father, who often wasn’t home because of work.
“I know sometimes and looking back on it now, it was like, ‘Hey where’s dad?’ or ‘Why is he not home?’ ” Snell said. “But he always made time that Thursday night to take us up to Sonny’s.”
That was the routine in high school. Snell played on Friday nights. He ate all-you-can-eat chicken at Sonny’s BBQ with his father and brother on Thursday nights.
In 2007, while pondering his next step in life and needing a job, Snell asked himself, “Why not Sonny’s?” Snell and his mom always maintained a dialogue about what he wanted to do after football. He had told her he wanted to be a cook. A chef, in fact. She didn’t know what that meant. Neither did he. He dabbled in culinary arts in high school, but at that point, he just knew he liked food.
So, what the hell, Snell thought. At 25, he started working for Sonny’s BBQ as a manager. He assumed his tenure wouldn’t last long. For the first six months, all he ate was the chain restaurant’s chicken.
“It really brought me back to that spot,” Snell said. “My dad and I, we don’t see each other as much as we used to. But it still is that bond that we had. Come hell or high water, that was going to be our time.”
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Snell doesn’t share that story often. But have him talk long enough about barbecue, and the big man can’t help but get sentimental in trying to get his point across.
“You ever hear someone say they are going to throw an Italian when they are having Italian food? No, but you throw a barbecue with your family and friends,” Snell said. “Barbecue is love. At some point in time, barbecue just became near and dear to my heart. It really is one of those things.”
Like all good marriages, Snell’s relationship with barbecue was uncomplicated. At least, at first. Sonny’s BBQ has locations in eight states, but Gators booster Floyd “Sonny” Tillman founded the restaurant in Gainesville in 1968. Thus, Florida football and Sonny’s BBQ are connected. Snell immediately became a manager in part because he was a former Gator. The job was fun, but after a few years, Snell began to question barbecue.
“I started to lose faith in barbecue,” Snell said.
He wanted more from it. He wanted something to work toward. In 2015, Sonny’s introduced a revamped pitmaster program. Snell enlisted. He found his calling.
Snell’s first competition as a pitmaster was more than two years ago. His team finished in third place out of 45. The Florida BBQ Association grades chicken, ribs, brisket and pork on appearance, taste and tenderness. Generally, pitmasters specialize in one or two meats. Snell’s expertise is ribs. In that competition, Snell’s ribs won first place.
“I knew at that point in time, I was so excited, so happy, that man, I can cook some barbecue,” Snell said. “Competition brings out the best. God, it’s like winning the game off a field goal.”
Only better, though.
“Even in football, I got out of it pretty quickly because I didn’t believe in it,” Snell said. “This, I been in it for 12 years. Almost as long as I was playing football. And I’m still enjoying it because I believe in it. Barbecue gives me a sense of believing in who I am every single day.”
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The pride was evident in the smile that appeared across Snell’s face and the satisfied laughter that followed as he recently sat inside a Sonny’s BBQ in Gainesville across from someone trying his ribs for the first time. The ribs were dressed in amber sauce. Not too much sugar. He had taken them out during the cooking process and wrapped them in butter, brown sugar and honey. He used apple cider to kill some of the brown sugar. It evens things out, he explained. They stayed wrapped inside a smoker for 90 minutes, until the fat was cooked out.
“They aren’t the same ribs I cooked yesterday or the day before,” Snell said. “So it’s going to be a challenge every day for me to try to attain to be better. Ribs is my thing. Ribs are my number one specialty.”
It’s his identity. Recently, Snell appeared on CNN to talk barbecue. It wasn’t the first time his expertise was featured on a news station. It probably won’t be the last. On Twitter, where his presence is increasingly growing, his bio mentions he is a “Gator by blood,” but it also reads, “BBQ Thanos. Cooking is my passion, Relational Rib Counselor.”
“It’s weird,” Snell said. “They follow me not because I played football, but because of BBQ. And I think that’s the coolest part. I am a BBQ guy that happened to play football. That’s cool.”
(Photos: Cyndi Chambers for The Athletic)
