The Hall truth about ex-Ram Eddie Meador

Dave Meador was lying on a beach in Pensacola, Fla., last summer when the thought suddenly hit him.

His father belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

"It was an epiphany," he says.

Eddie Meador, his father, was a ball-hawking free safety who intercepted 46 passes for the Los Angeles Rams from 1959 to 1970, a franchise record that still stands.

A six-time Pro Bowler and two-time All-Pro, Meador was one of three safeties named to the NFL's all-decade team for the 1960s -- along with former St. Louis Cardinals great Larry Wilson and former USC and Green Bay Packers standout Willie Wood, both of whom are enshrined at Canton, Ohio.

"I probably was as good a ballplayer as some of the people that's already in there," the plain-spoken Meador says from his home in Natural Bridge, Va. "Maybe not, but I think that."

Dave Meador, a high school English teacher and former football and baseball coach who lives in Russellville, Ark., hopes that the Hall of Fame selection committee will agree. Last fall, he and his three siblings asked their father, 71, whether he'd mind if they started a Hall of Fame campaign on his behalf.

With his blessing, they launched an impressive-looking website, edmeador21.com, which details their father's credentials.

Included are testimonials, one from ex-Rams defensive tackle Merlin Olsen, a Hall of Famer who says his former teammate not only was "outstanding in coverage and a fierce tackler" but also possessed "a remarkable nose for the football that allowed him to come up with big plays again and again."

In Virginia, Meador says he'd given up on making the Hall years ago "because normally if you're going to be selected, it's within a certain period of time after you're retired."

He'd put the Hall out of his mind, he says, until his grown children, ages 37 to 50, approached him with their idea.

"I don't know a whole lot about it, other than the fact that they believe I really need to be there," he says of their lobbying efforts on his behalf. "They may be a little prejudiced, but it would be a tremendous honor for me, I know that."

Calling his election "a longshot," he notes, "The selection committee probably doesn't even know who I am."

Meador and his second wife, Annette, live on 10 acres north of Roanoke in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley, the former Rams co-captain noting with pride, "I can look out my windows in the den and see the Blue Ridge Mountains and I can look out from my bedroom and see the Appalachian Mountains."