Sossamon caught the attention of head coach Rex Enright of the University of South Carolina (USC), who offered him an athletic scholarship to play football at the school.

[4] He was placed with an outgoing unit to be deployed to the combat zone in the Pacific at the time of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subsequent end of the war.

[5] He landed a spot on the roster of the New York Yankees, a team in the new All-America Football Conference (AAFC), a new professional league established as a rival to the NFL.

[3] Sossamon died in Gaffney, South Carolina, on February 11, 2019, at the age of 97 of "natural causes," according to his surviving daughter, Kit Smith, who added, "basically of playing too much football.

[3] Sossamon was married and had three children in all, later selling the Gaffney Register to a son to make that publication a rare four-generation family newspaper in the state of South Carolina.