No one ever accused him of being a ‘dirty’ player, like a Conrad Dobler, but everybody he ever hit knew Butkus meant to do them harm.
“No one ever accused him of being a ‘dirty’ player”
In Butkus’ words, “I’m not so mean,” Butkus told Chicago Tribune reporter Cooper Rollow. “I wouldn’t ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately. Unless it was, you know, important – like a league game or something.”
And the Detroit Lions did say he shouldn’t be out there:
But sometimes the reputation hurt him, when his hard hitting was misconstrued as dirty. He wrote about one such moment in his 1972 book “Dick Butkus, Stop-Action.” After the death on the field of Lions receiver Chuck Hughes during a Bears game in Detroit in 1971, Butkus wrote he picked up a magazine that had a quote from Lions middle linebacker Mike Lucci: “Something ought to be done about Butkus. He intentionally tries to hurt people, and that’s wrong.”
Hughes died of a heart attack, not a hit. So the label was public and it just stuck. Course, Butkus didn’t take much action to stop it and used it as an intimidation. No one wanted to run at him and receivers did not want to cross the middle. Changed offensive schemes.
But the legend continued when it went public that he punched Joe Greene, spit on a downed and injured Bill Bergey, and kicked Merlin Olsen in the head. But I can appreciate him as he made no bones about his play and it cost him as he died from brain damage from years of leading with his head and rooster blocking opponents. He used to send his opponents across from him letters in the off season telling them what he was going to do to them. At least he was honest about it. And I wouldn’t have the pelotas to piss off people like Green and Olsen. There’s a fine line between courage and stupidity.
wy69