“During my three years’ experience as coach at Columbia,” says Sanford, “we beat all the big teams except Harvard.  I was fortunate enough to develop such men as Weekes, Morley, Wright, and Berrien, players whose records will always stand high in the Hall of Football Fame at Columbia.  I was particularly well satisfied with the work I got out of Slocovitch, a former Yale player, whom the Yale coaches had never seemed to handle properly.  I did not allow him to play over one day a week.  This was because I had discovered that he was very heavily muscled; that if he played continuously he would become muscle bound.  My treatment proved to fit the case exactly and Slocovitch became a star end for Columbia.  We defeated Yale the first year; the next year at New Haven the contest was a strenuous one, and the game attracted unusual attention.  It was in my own home town, and I had to stand for a lot of good natured kidding, but those who were there will remember how scared the Yale coaches got during the last part of the game, when Columbia made terrific advances.  How Columbia’s team fought Gordon Brown’s Eleven almost to a standstill that day is something that the Yale coaches of that time will long remember.”

An old Yale player, Bob Loree, whose father is a Trustee of Rutgers, induced Sanford to lend the college his assistance.  Apparently this connection was an unmixed blessing.  “Mr. L. F. Loree, Bob’s father,” says Sandy, “has frankly admitted that in his opinion Sanford’s gift to the college (for he works without remuneration) has brought a spirit and a betterment of conditions which is worth fully as much as donations of thousands of dollars.

“From the first day I went there,” continues Sandy, “I started to build up football for Rutgers and to rely on Rutgers men for my assistants.  It was there that I met the best football man I ever coached, John T. Toohey.  This remarkable tackle weighed 220 pounds.  The life he led and the example he set will always have a lasting influence upon Rutgers men.  For sad to relate, Toohey was killed in the railroad yards at Oneonta, where he was yard master.  Toohey was a great leader, possessing a wonderful personality, and winning the immediate respect of every one who knew him.”

Twenty-five years have passed since I saw Sanford that morning in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  Since then I have followed his football career with enthusiasm.  Boyhood heroes live long in mind.  He is what might be called a major surgeon in football, for it is a matter of record that he has been called back to Yale, not when the patient was merely sick, but in a serious condition.  Usually the operation has been performed with such skill that the patient has rallied with disconcerting suddenness.

Talking to the Yale teams between the halves, giving instructions, which have turned dubious prospects into flaming victories, is a service which Sanford has rendered Yale more than once.  Victory, as it happens, is the principal characteristic of Sanford’s work.  Long is the list of players whom Sanford has developed.