Troy University Athletics
Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 2017
When Frank Sadler took the football field, it was hard not to take notice.
“He would hit your block off,” former Troy football player Mike Amos said. “He only weighed 135 pounds, but he hit you with all 135 pounds.”
While Sadler is being inducted for his efforts in football, he could have gone in for any number of sports, as he was a four-sport star for the Trojans during his tenure from 1956-1960.
The Albany, Ga., Native lettered in football, basketball, track and field and baseball during his freshman season alone when he arrived on Troy’s campus.
Scholarships were limited back in those days, so Sadler was one of five players who interviewed with head coach Bill Clemson for a spot on the team. He was the only one offered a scholarship.
Instead of using the $800 he received, the running back and defensive back sent every dime of it right back to his family. Then he went to work becoming one of the best kick returners in school history.
Nicknamed the “Little Beaver,” Sadler still holds the record with most career kickoff returns for touchdowns at three in the more than 100 years Trojan football has existed.
That number is actually four, but one of those kickoff returns came when Sadler was playing with the freshmen team. He is also one of just two players in Troy’s history to return more than one kickoff for a touchdown in a single season.
Those touchdown records aren’t the only records he still holds, as he had a remarkable 215 kickoff return yards against North Alabama in a matchup in the 1959 season.
“His motto was ‘I believe,’” Amos said. “He believed he was the best. A lot of people thought he was cocky, but that’s just the way he played. At 135 pounds you better be cocky or something.”
Upon the conclusion of his student-athlete career with Troy, Sadler turned down an offer he had to play professional baseball to get married and spent the next 40 years teaching the game of football to the following generations.
His coaching journey began in Columbus, Ga., before he returned to Troy to accept the head coaching spot with Charles Henderson. Success didn’t take long as he only lost three games in the first two years he was coach, including winning the South Alabama Conference Championship.
Wherever he went, success followed. He left Charles Henderson to become the coach at Phenix City where he was able to coach an Alabama football legend in Woodrow Lowe, who went on to be a 3x All-American at Alabama and play 11 years with the San Diego Chargers.
By the end of his high school coaching career, Sadler’s career record was 110-65-5. He won three area and county championships at Bob Jones High School and was named Madison County Coach of the Year.
Sadler finished with only two losing seasons in his entire coaching career. After developing a reputation as one of the best option coaches in the country, he went off to the University of South Carolina to be an assistant coach.
In his time there, the Gamecocks went to the Gator Bowl twice, the Liberty Bowl and reached as high as No. 2 in the national rankings during the 1984 season.
Sadler, who was inducted into the Albany Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2002, is known as a person who did all he could to help others and who worked as hard as he could to get there.
“He is a very spiritual guy,” Amos said. “Everywhere he went he put God first. He was a great role model for kids and for men like myself. He taught me much more outside of football and is a wonderful man. This is very worthwhile for him entering the Hall of Fame because he is definitely a Hall of Famer.”
