Today's Tidbit... A Tall Tale About Coaching Towers

A tower looms behind the stands at an unknown location, c. 1925. (Personal collection)

Bob Dylan wrote All Along the Watchtower in 1966 or 1967 when recuperating from a motorcycle accident, none of which has anything to do with football other than the reference to watchtowers, which football coaches have used since at least the early 1920s. Some coaches built towers at smaller stadiums to film games or to give assistant coaches a high-level perspective on the action occurring on the field. However, we'll focus on the towers coaches used during practice to facilitate their own observations.

The earliest reference concerning a coach using a tower during practice relates to George Foster Sanford at Rutgers. Sanford played center at Yale and was one of four second-team All-American Bulldogs on the undefeated 1891 team, which also had five first-team All-Americans. He coached Columbia and Virginia before taking on Rutgers from 1913 to 1923, during which he did not take a salary, making his money running a Wall Street insurance brokerage.