They were where?! Over there — behind Big Sam’s derrière | Sam Venable
Fun Football Facts
Second of two parts
Knoxville native Richard Coleman, 85, is a passionate Tennessee fan. Retired after a long teaching career at Volunteer State Community College, he now lives in Nashville.
Richard mostly follows the Vols on TV these days. But way back when, he never missed a game at Neyland Stadium. In fact, he has the distinction of following the action, live, from a variety of angles.
He has watched from the press box, from season-ticket seats, even from inside the scoreboard.
Yet Richard also holds claim to viewing the Vols from the most peculiar vantage point imaginable: Around my dad’s butt.
It’s complicated. Allow me to explain.
“Big Sam,” my late father’s nickname in both figurative and literal applications, had many Tennessee football connections. He was a letterman, a professor in UT’s physical education department, a member of the university’s athletics board, and through the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s, one-third of the sideline “chain gang.”
Those are the guys in constant motion as the game progresses. Two of them handle opposite ends of the 10-yard chain measuring the distance to a first down. Depending on who was assigned to a home game, that could have been Maynard Glenn, Isham Gourley or Otis Skiles, among others.
The third person holds the downs marker. That was always Big Sam’s job.
His stick contained flip-over numbers to indicate the respective 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th down. Before each snap, it had to be aligned with the placement of the ball.
Ironically, this was the same spot where Richard and his late father, Carl, needed to be. Except well to the rear, so to speak.
Carl Coleman worked for the old Post Sign Co. in Knoxville. He designed, oversaw construction of and played a key role in operating the old scoreboard on the north end of Shields-Watkins Field between the 1930s and late 1960s. Lightbulbs inside this board showed the down and position of the ball.
In that quaint era before high-tech gizmos, the only method available to Carl for relaying information from the field to an operator manning the scoreboard was via telephone.A handheld phone. With a loooong cord.
It was taxing enough for Carl to follow each play, on the run, and shout the information into his phone. But poor Richard had to work doubly hard. It was his responsibility to keep up with his dad, all the while carrying coils of that loooong cord and making sure it wasn’t snagged, crushed by cleats or disconnected.
Thus, both Colemans followed the action along with, and behind, Big Sam. As Richard remembers: “It sure made an interesting perspective.”
“Little Sam” Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Sam Venable: They were where?! Over there — behind Big Sam’s derrière
