Royal Jenesen Cathcart (April 8, 1926 – February 5, 2012) 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 with ...

halfback who played for the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

. He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

, having previously attended

Long Beach Polytechnic High School Long Beach Polytechnic High School, founded in 1895 as Long Beach High School, is a four-year public high school located at 1600 Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach, California, United States. The school serves portions of Long Beach, including Bixby ...

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

. He was the brother of

Sam Cathcart Samuel Woodrow Cathcart (July 7, 1924 – April 3, 2015) was an American football halfback and defensive back who played for the San Francisco 49ers. He played college football at the University of California, Santa Barbara, having previously att ...

, who also played for the 49ers. Cathcart also was a line judge and side judge 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) for 16 seasons from 1971 through 1986, wearing uniform number 16.

References

1926 births 2012 deaths American football halfbacks Long Beach Polytechnic High School alumni UC Santa Barbara Gauchos football players San Francisco 49ers players Players of American football from Oklahoma People from Washita County, Oklahoma National Football League officials {{runningback-1920s-stub