Joseph Chessar Watt (June 18, 1919 – June 27, 1983) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

halfback who played professionally for three seasons in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL Watt was born in Montreal and attended Erasmus High School in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. He played college football and

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional p ...

at Syracuse University. Watt served as a lieutenant in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and was a member of the 1944 Camp Lee Travellers football team. Watt was selected by the

Boston Yanks The Boston Yanks were a National Football League team based in Boston, Massachusetts, that played from 1944 to 1948. The team played its home games at Fenway Park. Any games that conflicted with the Boston Red Sox baseball schedule in the Ameri ...

the 47th pick in the seventh round of the 1947 NFL Draft and later played for the Detroit Lions and the

New York Bulldogs The New York Yanks were an American football team that played in the National Football League under that name in the 1950 and 1951 seasons. Season by season overview 1949 The team began in 1944 as the Boston Yanks, owned by Kate Smith's manage ...

. Watt later worked for the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company for over 20 years. He was the founder and president of the Joseph C. Watt Distributing Co. in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...

until his retirement in 1982. Watt died on June 27, 1983, at Tomkins Community Hospital, in Ithaca.

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* * 1919 births American football halfbacks Players of American football from Quebec Boston Yanks players 1983 deaths American football defensive backs Camp Lee Travellers football players Detroit Lions players New York Bulldogs players Syracuse Orange football players Syracuse Orangemen baseball players United States Army officers United States Army personnel of World War II Erasmus Hall High School alumni Sportspeople from Brooklyn Sportspeople from Montreal Players of American football from New York City Baseball players from New York City Military personnel from New York City Anglophone Quebec people {{runningback-1910s-stub