University of St. Thomas alumnus John Schneider was recently mentioned in The Seattle Times and The Athletic ahead of Super Bowl LX. During the 2025 season, before the Seattle Seahawks’ NFC Championship win, the Seahawks had a resurgence, a turnaround Schneider attributed to his vision, a focused rebuilding effort, and dynamic play on the field. He also credits St. Thomas for his professional growth, where he studied history and secondary education.
From The Seattle Times:
While Schneider has been a key figure in the franchise since he was hired in 2010, he wasn’t fully given the reins until the Seahawks made one of their biggest moves in recent years: firing legendary coach Pete Carroll in 2024. ...
Born in 1971, Schneider was too late for the Packers’ Lombardi-era glory days, but he became an obsessed NFL fan nonetheless.
“I collected football cards,” Schneider once said. “And so my punishment wasn’t my parents taking the TV away from me, it was more my mom would take my football cards away, because I’d be up in my room messing around making teams and pretending I was trading players and stuff like that.”
That, in part, led to an interest in working in football, which led to a moment that become a canonical part of his story.
While attending the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., Schneider began writing to then Packers general manager Ron Wolf, saying he’d be willing to work for free doing just about anything as long as he could get a foot in the door. At the urging of a friend, he cold-called Wolf’s office. ...
From The Athletic:
...The son of an orthopedic surgeon, Schneider lived six miles from Lambeau Field in De Pere, Wis., during his childhood. He was obsessed with football and cherished his card collection, but those were lean years for the Packers, so he became a Walter Payton fan. And he was a heck of a high school running back.
During his junior year at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, Schneider read a story about Ron Wolf. It said he had been a writer for Pro Football Illustrated and was hired by the Oakland Raiders in 1963 after writing Al Davis a letter.
So Schneider wrote Ron a letter asking for an internship. Then came a rejection letter, time on his knees in the St. Thomas chapel, three more notes to Ron, more chapel time and three more rejection letters.
The story Schneider read also said that Ron answered his own office phone, so he cold-called him on his private line on the day before Memorial Day in 1992. “To this day, I don’t know how he got that number,” Ron says. “Or how he knew I was there.”
Related Content
