“Chasing Sam” has been the mantra for one of Santa Barbara County’s most established sports families.
Living up to the legend of the late Sam Cathcart, a World War II hero and football Hall of Famer, has been a motivating force the last six decades for his children and grandkids alike.
Grandson Casey was the latest Cathcart to chase Sam — and pursue a fleet receiver in the process —while playing a defensive back last weekend for the Golden Angeles University Condors.
“The ball is thrown way over there, away from me, but here’s a crossing route coming underneath,” the younger Cathcart recalled. “I just go cut the guy out anyway … I take his legs out.”
The cheap shot was caught on film in its entirety. Shouts of “Cut! … Print!” immediately echoed throughout the stadium at East Los Angeles College.
The Cathcart family has gone Hollywood.
Casey, a former college football quarterback and now an aspiring actor, has been called into play the last three years to serve as a stuntman on the hit Netflix show All American. His cheap shot will be shown when the premiere for its fifth season airs Oct. 10.
“The magic of Grandpa Sam definitely flows through me,” Casey said. “It gave me the will and the want-to to go for a little bit more and chase Hollywood.”
War and Remembrance
Sam Cathcart’s own life story seemed scripted in Hollywood.
He married his sweetheart, Sue, shortly before heading overseas with the U.S. Army’s 75th Infantry Division. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and, two months later, faced dire circumstances near the Rhine River when his squad was pinned down by a machine-gun nest.
A staff sergeant, Cathcart earned the Silver Star and a Purple Heart by charging the machine-gun pit. Despite taking a bullet in the arm, he was able to kill all the Germans — the last one with the butt of his rifle after he’d run out of ammunition.
He recovered from his wounds to become an all-conference halfback for the UC Santa Barbara football team and played three seasons for the San Francisco 49ers. He left the NFL to settle down with his family of four children and become a teacher and coach at Santa Barbara High School.
He guided the Dons to a 134-41-5 record in 19 seasons as head coach, winning 10 Channel League championships and a CIF-Southern Section title in 1960. All three of his sons — Steve, Sam Jr. and Scott — starred for SBHS before playing in college. Daughter Sharon married the Dons’ star quarterback, Raimond Calderon.
“I wanted to be a pro athlete … We all want to grow up to be like Grandpa,” said Casey, the oldest of Jennifer and Scott Cathcart’s three sons. “We wanted to chase Sam. He was the guy. He was a war hero and a football player and Hall of Fame coach.”
Scott Cathcart played football at Fresno State before entering a career in college sports administration. He worked at Temple University before returning to the West Coast to become the athletic director at Allan Hancock College just before Casey’s junior year of high school.
Golfing With Gramps
“I really got to hang with Grandpa a lot more when we moved to Santa Maria,” Casey said. “We’d play golf every weekend and talk football or talk shop.
“I was the new kid at St. Joseph High … I was going to be the quarterback, so he talked to me a lot about keeping myself on an even keel and working hard, staying humble and doing whatever coach (Barney) Eames said.”
Sam Cathcart always had “candy in his pocket” for his 10 grandchildren.
“People who knew Grandpa always say, ‘You look just like Sam,’” Casey said. “I get that a lot. The jaw line and the nose … and the look in the eyes. I definitely come from Sam.”
“But make sure you say that I get all my good looks from Mom,” he added with a laugh.
Casey played two seasons for the Knights. He earned Cal-Hi All-State Second-Team honors in 2004 after passing for 1,828 yards and 20 touchdowns to lead St. Joseph to an 11-2 record and a berth in the CIF-SS semifinals.
Cathcart also won All-Western State Conference honors at Hancock in 2007 by passing for 1,398 yards and 12 TDs. He earned a scholarship to play at Arkansas-Monticello, an NCAA Division II program, and graduated with a degree in business administration.
He tried coaching for a while, serving as offensive coordinator at St. Joseph when his youngest brother, Joe, was on the team. He also coached the quarterbacks at Santa Barbara City College for a season. But that’s when he realized that he should stop trying to Chase Sam.
“I knew I could never catch him,” Cathcart said. “I knew I could never be that good.”
Acting on a Tip
He took a sales job with a software company called MindBody and settled into a 9-to-5 routine for the next four years.
“I could’ve stuck with that and become a manager as a regular gig, but I got sick of being in an office all the time,” he said. “You’re stuck inside the walls of rows of computers, just talking to people on the phone all the time.
“I wanted something more.”
Dustin Garnett, his former teammate at Hancock, suggested he try working as a bit actor.
“He was bouncing around Hollywood as a gripper and a gaffer, on the other side of the camera,” he said. “He put it into my head, ‘Hey, you could go onto these casting websites, create a profile — and in this day and age, that’s the new way to audition. You can do it all digitally.’
“I really liked that idea of working for myself, being responsible for what roles I thought I could do. I jumped right into it.”
Cathcart’s blond hair, blue eyes, and chiseled, 6-foot-1 physique got him type-cast for several films and commercials.
He’s a hip, young president of the United States in the recurring “Emface” commercials produced for BTL Aesthetics. He’s also an extra in the current DirecTV commercial featuring former baseball stars Álex Rodríguez, David Ortiz, Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson as Ghostbusters.
“We shot for four days up at the Oakland A’s Coliseum,” Cathcart said. “I’m a baseball player in a gray uniform. That was a fun little treat to work on.”
Another Coach Cathcart
He plays a basketball coach in Bel-Air, a more dramatic reboot of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sitcom. It debuted on the Peacock network in February.
“They cast me as the Malibu basketball coach because of my blond hair and blue eyes,” he said. “I was just going to be a background guy on the sideline, but they liked what I was doing with it.
“I was moving like Grandpa Sam or Dad, yelling, ‘Hustle! Move! Call the pick! Call the screen! Twenty-two, pick up No. 5! What are you doing?’”
Cathcart even improvised by “getting right up into the ref’s face, just being a coach.”
“That comes natural to me, and for a lot of these actor kids, they don’t have any experience with that,” he said. “They grew up only with theater.
“A lot of the stuff I got early fit right into what I am: a football player, beach guy, lifeguard. I was a coked-out CEO on this one show, though. That was kind of fun, dressing up in real nice suits.”
Cathcart’s workload has increased this year to the point where he’s earned health benefits with the Screen Actors Guild. One of his most recent roles is in an upcoming movie about the silent-film industry called Babylon.
“I did a scene with Brad Pitt, playing a 1920s actor,” he said.
He also plays a beefcake bartender in an upcoming drama series called Welcome to Chippendale’s that debuts on Hulu on Nov. 22. His most recent work has been on the set for a sci-fi movie for Netflix.
Drafted into the Wrong Army
“I’ve even gotten to dress up as a military guy a few times,” he said.
One of Cathcart’s roles was as a German soldier in a short film called Nisei. It tells the story of the Japanese-Americans who were recruited from internment camps during World War II to serve with the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
“It was actually kind of a bummer because I’d applied to be an American soldier,” he said with a laugh.
Cathcart was struck by the irony when his character was killed while firing upon U.S. soldiers from a machine-gun nest.
“I’m running the big machine gun, following the main character,” he said. “Somebody hits me in the head. He gets shot and a grenade goes off in our nest and we all die.
“When they were digging the ditch for our scene, and we were peering down to where we were to shoot, I was definitely thinking about Grandpa. I just couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like at 19, 20 years to face that kind of fight-or-flight moment.”
Grandpa Sam died at age 90 in 2015.
Back at Quarterback
Cathcart found himself back on the football field during the third season of All American as the stuntman for Hunter Clowdus, the actor who plays linebacker J.J. Parker. The character is pressed into service for several games as quarterback of the Beverly Hills High Eagles when the usual starter suffers a concussion.
“That was me playing quarterback in the high school championship game for Beverly Hills,” he said with a laugh. “They’d hired me to be a defensive back, or a safety, but then they saw I could throw the ball in between takes.”
The show, based loosely on the life of former NFL defensive back Spencer Paysinger, follows the football career of the fictional Spencer James as he goes from Beverly Hills High to Golden Angeles University.
Cathcart said his cheap shot came while he was playing a safety “who plays through the echo of the whistle.”
“I had to talk it through with the kid playing the receiver,” he said. “He’d played football at West Virginia and was a really fast slot receiver.
“He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it bro, don’t worry about it … Just don’t hit my left knee. Try and get my hip and I’ll roll over your back.’
“I went, ‘OK, man … I played quarterback my whole life so I’m not a super-pro, but I’ll get you.’”
They got it on one take.
“Bing, bang, boom!” Cathcart said. “My stunt coordinator was real happy. He said, ‘If you didn’t do that so well, it was going to be another $600.’
“I went, ‘Crap! I should’ve messed it up! I could’ve made a couple extra bucks.’”
His goal isn’t to become the next Brad Pitt or even the next Sam Cathcart.
“I’d like something like the character ‘Mayhem’ in those Allstate Insurance commercials,” he said. “Mayhem is my guy. I love his character. He’s not too serious but not too funny, either. He’s just physical.
“He’s great!”
Now that he’s in Hollywood, Chasing Mayhem seems the sensible way to go.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.