The Pittsburgh Steelers have had several notable players with nicknames throughout their history. From Mean Joe Greene to Deebo, to The Bus. Typically, nicknames are bestowed on some of the team’s best players. But where do these names come from in the first place? In the case of Casey “Big Snack” Hampton, it was completely made up by a teammate and caught on with the fan base to become synonymous with his name.
“First of all, none of my teammates never called me that, right? So I’m gonna tell you how I got the name,” Hampton said in an interview with Rob King on the Steelers’ YouTube page. “We were at training camp and some people were interviewing people like the best nicknames on the team and things like that. And Travis Kirschke, I’ll never forget…he was like, ‘Oh yeah man we call him Big Snack ’cause all the time he’s snacking and he’s eating this and he’s eating that. During meetings and whatever, always snacking.’
“So I come out of lunch…the people who interviewed him were like I heard they call you Big Snack. I’m like, Big Snack? So after that everybody just started calling me Snack.”
One of the iconic nicknames from the 2000s Steelers teams was essentially made up by one of his teammates in the spur of the moment during an interview. If the shoe fits, wear it.
Hampton was about as big as they come at the nose tackle position. Listed at 325 for basically his entire career, he would often show up to training camp quite a bit heavier than that. And there were multiple times that he failed the conditioning run test during camp as a result.
That didn’t stop him from being one of the dominant defensive linemen of the early 2000s with five Pro Bowl selections. Due to the nature of the nose tackle position, often eating up two blockers and not lighting up the stat sheet with sacks, those Pro Bowls were earned through being very good at his role within the team. He enabled the rest of the defense to play a man up as a two-gap nose tackle. There was a reason he was named to the Steelers’ 75th anniversary team in 2007 with just six years of experience at the time.
And despite not being in the best shape, he managed a 12-year career in Pittsburgh and was remarkably healthy and available throughout that stretch.
You never know when an iconic football nickname is going to pop up out of nowhere, but sometimes it just fits too well. In this case, Casey Hampton very much was the “Big Snack.”
