By Mike Pound

Globe columnist

mpound@joplinglobe.com

If Rod Smith is upset that his long professional football career may be coming to an end, he’s doing a good job of hiding his emotions.

“The last thing I am is upset,” he said. “From where I started from, I’ve already won. I started with nothing. Period.”

Not only did Rod come from a decidedly humble economic background — “My mom raised five kids on $6,000 a year,” he said — but he also entered the NFL in 1994 as free-agent wide receiver from a relatively unknown Division II football program. His chances of making it through his first professional training camp, let alone becoming a legitimate candidate for the NFL Hall of Fame, were longer than the odds that Big Brown would finish last in the Belmont Stakes.

“It (his first professional training camp with the Denver Broncos) was a little intimidating,” Rod said. “Here I was from Missouri Southern, and there were all these guys from schools like USC, Notre Dame and Stanford. They look at you different. It was tough.”

I asked Rod how intimidating it was to try to catch a John Elway pass during that first training camp, and he laughed.

“When you start out like I did, you don’t get to catch passes from John,” he said. “You have to get them from whoever you can.”

Rod, after undergoing two hip surgeries in the past year and a half, is on the Broncos’ reserve/retired list but has yet to officially announce his retirement. There is an outside chance, he said, that he might play again this year, but he doesn’t seem hung up on the idea.

“After 14 years of football, I’m tired,” he acknowledged.

I spoke with Rod last Friday at his annual golf tournament to benefit Missouri Southern State University. As we stood on the fairway at Briarbrook Country Club in Carl Junction, talking about how far he has come, I asked Rod if, as a kid, he ever envisioned a life that would allow him to play golf at private clubs around the country.

He laughed.

“Man, the closest I came to golf was when we would play baseball with a golf ball and a broken table leg,” Rod said. “You would throw the golf ball to whoever was swinging the table leg and get out of the way.”

It is, I think, those memories of his humble background that keep Rod connected with Missouri Southern. Over the years, he has consistently credited the university for much of his success. It was his MSSU football coach, the late Jon Lantz, who convinced the shy, skinny kid from the projects of Texarkana, Ark., that he could become a standout player. Jon, Rod said, also taught him about life off the football field.