A Village of Chatham couple’s son appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Thursday after being featured in a viral video.
Tom and Ellen Kay Padden’s son Sean is the associate athletic director of Baylor University’s football team.
Telling the story of Sean and his parents was his godmother’s husband John Chipriano, also a resident of Village of Chatham.
John’s wife Ann Marie went to school, all the way through high school, with Sean’s mother. His wife hosted reunions in Scranton, Pa. but the couple moved to The Villages, where she continued the reunions.
A few of their friends, including Tom and Ellen, bought homes in The Villages, continuing their close knit friendships.
After Sean graduated college at Catholic University, he became a college football coach. John says Sean met former Penn State football player Matt Rhule when the two coached at Albright College.
Rhule then became the head football coach at Temple University in 2012, and Sean served as the director of football operations at Temple. Sean was named athletic director/chief of staff at Temple in 2014.
According to John, after a very successful stint as a team at Temple, Rhule got an offer to be the head coach of Baylor’s football team. Rhule brought Sean, along with a few others, from Temple to Baylor.
“At a recent football practice, at Baylor, Matt told his team that he’d give them an extra hour off their curfew if Sean could beat a robotic tackling dummy,” said John on the story behind the viral video.
Someone recorded a video of the race, which shows Sean running down, beating the robot but is eventually taken down by the robot.
As a result of the video going viral, Jimmy Fallon saw the video and invited Sean up to New York for a rematch against the robot. The race against the robot was recorded on Wednesday and was aired on last night’s segment.
You can watch it here.
