Tillman R. Sease Sr. (September 6, 1916 – September 2, 1988) 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 ...

and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

coach. He served as the head football coach at

Bluefield State College Bluefield State University (Bluefield State) is a university in Bluefield, West Virginia that is an historically black university. It is a part of West Virginia's public education system and converted to a university in the summer of 2022. It a ...

Bluefield, West Virginia Bluefield is a city in Mercer County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 9,658 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Bluefield WV- VA micropolitan area, which had a population of 106,363 in 2020. Geography Bluefie ...

from 1959 to 1961 and

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

from 1962 to 1968 and from 1970 to 1972, compiling a career college football coaching record of 53–58–1. He was also Howard's head baseball coach. A native of

York, Pennsylvania York (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Yarrick''), known as the White Rose City (after the symbol of the House of York), is the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the south-central region of the state. The populatio ...

, Sease graduated from Bluefield State in 1948 and later earned a master's degree in education from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. From 1948 to 1956, he was the

athletic director An athletic director (commonly "athletics director" or "AD") is an administrator at many American clubs or institutions, such as colleges and universities, as well as in larger high schools and middle schools, who oversees the work of coaches an ...

at Christiansburg Institute in Christiansburg, Virginia, where he also coached football,

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

, and baseball. Sease returned to Bluefield State in 1956, where he worked as an assistant football and basketball coach under Sam B. Taylor for three years. He was appointed athletic director at Bluefield State in 1959.

Head coaching record

College football

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sease, Tillman 1916 births 1988 deaths Bluefield State Big Blues athletic directors Bluefield State Big Blues football coaches Bluefield State Big Blues men's basketball coaches Howard Bison baseball coaches Howard Bison football coaches Bluefield State College alumni Teachers College, Columbia University alumni Sportspeople from York, Pennsylvania African-American coaches of American football African-American college athletic directors in the United States 20th-century African-American sportspeople