Dan Towler
Daniel Lee "Deacon" Towler was an American professional football player. He played in the National Football League as a fullback for the Los Angeles Rams from 1950 through 1955.
Career
A devout Methodist, Towler agreed to play football only if he could not miss class for his master's degree in theology.He was the NFL leading rusher in 1952 and ranked among the top four rushers each year from 1951 to 1954. He graduated from Washington & Jefferson College. One game that he remembered fondly was a 1953 game against Baltimore Colts, where he rushed for 205 yards on 14 carries that saw him moved from fullback to right halfback that saw him take tosses from the quarterback "and going every which way but the right way." Towler was part of a fullback lineup called the "Bull Elephant backfield" alongside Paul "Tank" Younger and Dick Hoerner that came about in 1950 to serve as a powerful weapon for games.
The football statistics website Football Nation calls Towler "the greatest running back you don't know," and "a bright, shining star who lit up the NFL for an oh-so-brief but spectacular three-year period unlike any before or since." "or a three-year period in the early 1950s," says Football Nation, "Towler was the closest thing the NFL has ever produced to an unstoppable ball carrier." He retired after six seasons to become a Methodist minister, having gotten his degree in June. After retiring from football, Towler was named pastor of the Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church in Pasadena, California; he went from making $16,000 for his final season to making $3,600 as a pastor. He later earned a doctorate in education in 1972 while also expressing no regret for quitting football when he did. He was one of the original directors of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. By the 1980s, he served as a chaplain at California State University, Los Angeles and president of the Los Angeles County Board of Education alongside serving as a statistician for the Associated Press for select USC and Rams games. He also founded an educational foundation to give financial assistance for college students.