Background

Dick Butkus was born on December 9, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He is the fifth son and seventh child of John Butkus, an electrician, and Emma Goodoff. He came from a family of large people and weighed over thirteen pounds at birth.

Education

Butkus was small and unathletic as a child, which was a relief to his mother, who did not want him playing football and risking injury the way his brothers did in high school. But Butkus had wanted to be a football player as long as he could remember and he grew bigger and stronger. At Chicago Vocational High School, he played both fullback and linebacker well enough to be chosen the Chicago Sun-Times Player of the Year in 1959 and the 1960 Associated Press Prep-Football Player of the Year.

He selected the University of Illinois from all the colleges vying for him. Notre Dame wanted him but did not want its players to be married, and Butkus already had married his high school sweetheart, Helen Essenberg, with whom he later had three children. At Illinois, Butkus at times played center but was better known for his play at middle linebacker, where he excelled in speed, strength, and toughness. In 1963, his junior year, he was credited with making 145 tackles and causing 10 fumbles. He was chosen All-American, and Illinois was ranked third in the country, winning the Big Ten championship and the Rose Bowl. His senior year, he repeated as All-American and was voted the College Football Player of the Year by the Sporting News.

Career

In 1965, the Chicago Bears drafted Butkus, who was also drafted by the American Football League (AFL) Denver Broncos. Butkus was happy to sign with the Bears for $200,000, more than any defensive rookie had ever been paid. In the first game of the Bears' season, the six-foot, three-inch, 245-pound Butkus made eleven unassisted tackles against the San Francisco 49ers. That began a year in which he was chosen All-Pro, and the defense allowed over a hundred fewer points than it had the previous year.

Through 1970, Butkus was the preeminent middle linebacker. Every year, he was voted All-Pro and selected to play in the Pro Bowl, and every year, he led the Bears in tackles and assists, intercepting a few passes and recovering a few fumbles along the way. In 1969 and 1970, he was chosen Defensive Player of the Year.

Butkus showed his versatility in 1971 with a memorable play. Although he had not played on offense since college, he lined up as a blocking back whenever the team attempted to kick a field goal or extra point. National Football League (NFL) rules at the time stated that the point after touchdown could be kicked through the uprights or run or passed into the end zone, but because the team got one point either way, teams opted for the more certain kick. In a game against the Washington Redskins, however, the snap got away from holder Bobby Douglass. Douglass chased the ball down thirty yards behind the line and heaved a desperation pass to Butkus, who caught it and ran it in for the single point that turned out to be the Bears' margin of victory.

In another game during that season, this one against the Detroit Lions, the television audience saw another side, the human side, of Butkus. After a play, Lions' wide receiver Chuck Hughes collapsed on the way back to the huddle. From across the field, Butkus noticed, ran over to Hughes, and signaled desperately for medical attention. It was too late; Hughes was already dead of a heart attack. The alertness Butkus showed was typical of his play, but his compassion surprised many. For the most part, he was accurately portrayed by the media as a fierce, angry linebacker.

It was also in 1971, however, that Butkus suffered the first major injury of his career, damage to the ligaments of his right knee. The surgery was not entirely successful, and for the rest of his career, he played in pain. In 1973, Butkus reinjured the knee and retired. He finished his career with 1,020 tackles, 489 assists, 22 interceptions, and 25 recoveries of opposition fumbles. The fumble recoveries were a career record when he retired, but he was later passed by Jim Marshall and Rickey Jackson, both of whom had much longer careers than did Butkus. After his retirement, Butkus sued the Bears on the grounds that his medical treatment was inadequate; the case was settled out of court. In 1995, he had the knee replaced surgically.

Butkus announced Bears' games on the radio from 1985 to 1994 and humorously played off his violent, animalistic image in a series of light beer commercials in which he claimed to be "sensitive" and attended cultural events with Bubba Smith. He played himself in Brian's Song, a 1970 television docudrama about teammate Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer in mid-career. Butkus then went on from that role to a moderate-range acting career, usually portraying athletes. On television, he played Ed Klawicki in the sitcom My Two Dads (1987-1989) and high school basketball coach Mike Katowinski in Hang Time. He also joined the Internet, lending his name to dickbutkus.com, a successful site offering football news and tips.

In 2001, the World Wrestling Federation attempted to challenge the NFL's hegemony by setting up its own football league, the XFL. Butkus was hired to give the league some credibility as its director of competition (a title created for him), but he could not overcome the league's low quality and resulting low ratings, and the league folded after its first year.

In 2005, as part of the ESPN reality series Bound for Glory, Butkus served as the head football coach of Montour High School in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He coached the team to a 1-6 record before departing with two games remaining in the season.

Achievements

• Dick Butkus is considered one of the best linebackers of all time. In a career shortened by injuries, he accumulated 1,020 tackles, 22 interceptions, and 27 fumble recoveries, the last an NFL record for a defensive player at the time of his retirement.
  
  A five-time first-team All-Pro selection, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979 and in 1994 was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary All-Time Team. In 1985, the Downtown Athletic Club of Orlando (Florida) began presenting the Butkus Award to outstanding collegiate linebackers of the year. The Butkus Foundation assumed control of the award in 2008, and that year it was broadened to honour players at the high school and professional level.
  
  Butkus was named the ninth-best player in NFL history by The Sporting News in 1999, the tenth-best by the NFL Network in its The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players series in 2010, and the eight-best by the New York Daily News in 2014. He was also selected the 70th greatest athlete of the 20th century by ESPN.
  
  In 2018, Butkus was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Butkus: Flesh and Blood

    (In Butkus, Dick Butkus tells his entire life story, from ...)

    1997
  • Stop-Action 1972

• movie

  • Johnny Dangerously

    (In a hilarious sendup of gangster movies, Johnny Dangerou...)

    1984
  • Any Given Sunday

    (Oliver Stone scores the ultimate football movie! This pow...)

    1999
  • Spontaneous Combustion

    (A young man finds out that his parents had been used in a...)

    1990
  • Cry, Onion

    (Onion Jack has bought a piece of land on which to settle,...)

    1975
  • The Longest Yard

    (In this rough-and-tumble movie, actually filmed on-locati...)

    1974
  • Gremlins 2: The New Batch

    (Sweethearts Billy and Kate leave Kingston Falls for the b...)

    1990
  • Brian's Song

    (James Caan and Billy Dee Williams star in the true story ...)

    1971
  • Necessary Roughness

    (The Texas State Armadillos are fourth down and nowhere-to...)

    1991
  • Cracking Up

    (The story is about a nerd who goes to see a shrink about ...)

    1983

Views

The Butkus Foundation supports many charitable causes. It was formed to manage the receipt and disbursement of funds for Dick's charitable causes.

Quotations: "When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something."

"My thing is trying to convince them they can win."

"If we're not on them, they go back to their old ways."

"The real reason for coming to Montour is my love and respect for football."

"We're a big check mark on everybody's schedule. I told them it's just another challenge, let's go after it."

"The bottom line is that these athletes tend to be safer investments because they really value their marketing opportunities. They don't make as much money as during their active careers."

"Anything that happens that's good, they think, oh, it's an accident, when is the roof caving in? You've got to get them out of that mental framework."

Personality

As a football player, Dick had a ferocious intensity and drive for achievement. He had drive, intense focus and determination. Dick was the undisputed leader, epitomizing the clean, hard-nosed, brutal athleticism.

Part of his legendary success, by his own admission, was his ability to play with anger.

Physical Characteristics: Butkus is 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) tall and weighs 245 lb (111 kg).

Dick had his knee replaced with a metal unit. In 2001, Butkus underwent quintuple bypass surgery to remove blockages in his arteries. In 2002, nerve damage in his spine caused him to develop foot drop.

Quotes from others about the person

• Deacon Jones: "Butkus was a well-conditioned animal, and every time he hit you, he tried to put you in the cemetery, not the hospital."

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  NFL's Chicago Cardinals, golf

Connections

In 1963, Butkus married Helen Essenberg. The couple has three children: Richard, Matthew, and Nicole.

Father:

John Butkus

Mother:

Emma Goodoff

Spouse:

Helen Butkus

Daughter:

Nicole Butkus

Son:

Matthew Butkus

Son:

Richard Butkus

Friend:

Gale Sayers

(May 30, 1943 - September 23, 2020)

Gale Sayers was an American professional football player who was both a halfback and return specialist in the National Football League (NFL).

References

• Game of My Life Chicago Bears: Memorable Stories of Bears Football Since their founding in 1919, the Chicago Bears have carried the hearts and souls of football fans throughout the country. Now supporters of one of the NFL's most storied franchises will go into the locker room and onto the turf with over twenty Bears legends in Game of My Life Chicago Bears.
  2006