Steelers great Butler has yet to enter Hall of Fame

By Carl Prine, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/
Saturday, August 21, 2010

With Pittsburgh Steelers defensive guru Dick LeBeau now enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Jack Butler's supporters are redoubling efforts to get the cornerback into Canton.

Long considered one of the National Football League's greatest defensive backs, Butler, 82, also helmed the groundbreaking BLESTO scouting service. But sportswriters and the Hall of Fame's Seniors Committee continue to punt his selection.

Jack Butler starred for the Steelers as a defensive back in the 1950s, notching 52 career interceptions, and later ran a national pro scouting service for 44 years. A movement is now underway to get Butler inducted into the Hall of Fame, but Butler said it doesn't matter to him whether he gets in. "I'm just glad that I contributed," he said. "I'm very proud of playing in the league and giving back afterward, but I don't dwell on the other stuff."
Sidney Davis Tribune-Review

"When he was a player, Jack played for a very bad team. Had he played for the Lions or the Browns, he would've already been in the Hall of Fame, no questions asked," said Steelers vice president and minority owner Art Rooney Jr.

"We had all the greats from later teams get in, so people said there were too many Steelers. But this has penalized L.C. Greenwood, Andy Russell and Jack Butler. They should be in the Hall of Fame, too, but Jack was one of the greatest players to ever play the game and that means something special."

A native of Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, Butler was raised in Whitehall. Attending seminary prep school in Canada, he never played high school football. When he gave up on becoming a priest, he made the roster at New York's St. Bonaventure University.

He joined the Steelers' camp as an undrafted free agent in 1951, a scrawny kid on the single wing. The last guy to make the team, Butler became an undersized third-string defensive end. Early in his rookie season, however, injuries in the secondary made him a cornerback.

"I'd never really played defensive back before," Butler said. "But I gave it my all."

At the end of a stellar season, franchise founder Art Rooney Sr. paid him a $500 bonus. For the following eight years, Butler starred for a team that produced only two winning campaigns. And he toiled offseasons as an electrician's handyman, a Vandergrift mill worker and a ranchhand on The Chief's horse farm.

"I sure didn't get rich playing football," Butler said.

For the past two years, Greensburg's Jeffrey W. Weber, an MSA Sports Network executive, has forwarded a breakdown of Butler's career statistics to Hall voters: 52 interceptions and 10 fumble recoveries. According to Weber's analysis, Butler did it by averaging a pick every eight passes attempted against him.

Butler's 827 return yards off interceptions tops all other Steelers, including Mel Blount and Rod Woodson. He's the only defensive back of the NFL's 1950s All-Decade Team not in Canton.

"Teams didn't throw as often back then, but when they did, they faced no tougher challenge than Jack Butler," Weber said. "He was a clean player. He hit hard, but he was fair. He was the best player on what charitably might be called a 'mediocre' team. Had he not been injured in 1959, he would've set records that would've taken years to break."

Butler's career stats mirror Detroit's Jack Christiansen, who was inducted into the Hall in 1970. Drafted a year after Christiansen retired, LeBeau in 1959 took up his mantle as a lockdown Lion. He's a fan of Butler, too.

"He's one of the best in the Steelers franchise, and you're talking about some pretty great players there," said LeBeau.

When he rolls up his trousers, Butler's knee looks like a drumstick twisted into a white knot, the aftermath of a 1959 injury that ended his career. The following season found him hobbling on crutches — hired by the Buffalo Bills as a coach, but unable to withstand the pain of working out with players.

Needing to support wife Bernadette and a Munhall family that grew to eight children, Butler scouted Steelers competitors. In 1963, he caught on at LESTO — short for the Lions, Eagles, Steelers Talent Organization — a pooled scouting service that rated pro prospects nationwide. It later became BLESTO when the Chicago Bears joined, then BLESTO-V with the Minnesota Vikings.

Today, it's just BLESTO, and it represents the Steelers, Bills, Miami Dolphins, Jacksonville Jaguars, Lions, Vikings and New York Giants. It competes with The National, serving 18 franchises, and all the teams that do their own scouting.

Butler ran BLESTO for 44 years, retiring in 2007. Art Rooney Jr., former Steelers coach Chuck Noll and Butler's BLESTO sculpted the dominant gridiron dynasty of the 1970s, and it became a breeding ground for top NFL scouts, many of whom later rose to become personnel directors, such as the Steelers' Kevin Colbert.

Butler already has shipped scouting appraisals of tens of thousands of college prospects to Canton. They're just waiting for the man who signed off on them, often using increasingly sophisticated stats, software programs, stopwatches and strength tests to rate potential. BLESTO and other services also founded the Indianapolis pre-draft combine that has become a collegiate rite of passage.

"We were looking at the archetypal player," Butler said. "If you were looking at the best possible combination of speed, power, intelligence and other qualities at each position, what would it all look like? So we set it up like that, ranking prospects from the 'ideal' to less impressive. We wanted teams to see what the standards should be for a player to be successful in the NFL.

"But we also knew that you can't always judge a book by the cover. Sometimes, we would find a player who didn't look on paper like he would be a great player, but there was just something about him that came out when he played in a game. Then I would simply say, 'This guy can play football.' "

In BLESTO's early years, scouts confronted an NFL desegregating in fits and starts. Butler refused to consider race in player evaluations. Instead, he divided the nation geographically and demanded scouts rate a prospect solely by ability.

"I only cared if they could play," said Butler. "The rest of the stuff wasn't important to me."

Including getting into Canton.

"I don't like to talk about myself like that," he said. "I don't care if I get in or not. I'm just glad that I contributed. I'm very proud of playing in the league and giving back afterward, but I don't dwell on the other stuff."


The Butler Did It: Steelers of Glory Past

by maryrose on May 5, 2009 3:17 PM EDT
http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/



Special thanks to former Steeler Jack Butler for taking time to chat with BTSC about the good ol' days. He was truly one of the great ones.

In October of 2008, Jack Butler was selected as one of the top 33 Pittsburgh Steelers of all-time. That should grab your attention right there. Butler was born in Pittsburgh and went to college at St. Bonaventure. Because St. Bonaventure has never been noted for being a football powerhouse (the school dropped the program a year after Butler graduated), Butler would have never played in the NFL except for one small matter. The Athletic Director at St. Bonaventure was a priest named Father Dan Rooney, brother of Steelers' owner Art Rooney. He signed as a free agent defensive back.

Butler played nine years for the Steelers, 1951-59, and was getting better with each passing year, until he blew out a knee in the middle of the 1959 season. In those days, the dark ages of sports medicine, a major knee problem was all she wrote. In his last two full seasons, Butler intercepted 19 passes, a remarkable number considering they only played 12 games a year. His playing career short but brilliant, Butler ended up with 52 interceptions. Up until and through his time, only two NFL players intercepted more passes than Butler - Emlen Tunnel and Dick Night Train Lane. When the decade of the '60s began, 50-plus career interceptions was a group that you could count on one hand with two fingers missing.

Butler had a game that you can only dream of on December 13, 1953 in our nation's capitol. While out-rushing and out passing the Washington Redskins all game, the Steelers trailed after three quarters, 13-0 (typical for the Steelers in those days). Getting lost in the score was the outstanding game Jack Bulter was having. He had intercepted the great Eddie LeBaron three times. Finally, in the fourth quarter, the Steelers put a touchdown on the board to at least avert the shutout. Late in the game, down 13-7, Butler capped the game of his life by picking off LeBaron a fourth time, an NFL record still never broken, and taking it to the house for an electrifying 14-13 Steelers victory.

Two years later, Butler vividly remembers a fellow Pittsburgh native by the name of Johnny Unitas.

"I remember him well," recalls Butler. "I was a defensive back who always wanted to be a receiver. After practices I enjoyed catching passes. Unitas wasn't even getting into practice (1955 preseason), so he wanted to throw the ball after practice. The first thing you noticed was how awkward he looked, but his passes were perfect. He knew exactly where to put the ball in relationship to a defender. I thought, 'my goodness, what a great arm,' but the coaches never saw him throw."

Butler will never forget the day Unitas was cut. The two were together. After an exhibition game at Forbes Field, they drove back to Olean, New York, where the Steelers trained.

"Johnny told me in the car, 'I think they are going to cut me,' lamented Butler. I told him they couldn't cut him since they never saw him throw. Johnny said, 'that's the problem. They won't give me a chance.' Anyhow, we get to Olean in time for dinner. After dinner we were walking to the dorm and Kies (Head Coach Walt Kiesling) tells Johnny he was cut. They sent him back home to Pittsburgh. I don't know why Kiesling made him drive all the way to Olean just to send him back home, but given the future ramifications of it all, I guess it was par for the course."

Though his injury ended his playing days, Butler's time in the NFL was still in its infancy. Prior to the early 1960s, scouting and drafting were crude practices that were often counterproductive and cost-ineffective. Scouts from several teams would often find themselves in the same little off-the-beaten-path town learning the same information. Sure enough, it was the Pittsburgh Steelers who spearheaded the NFL's very first scouting combine. It was in the early 60s and it was called LESTO, standing for Lions Eagles Steelers Talent Organization. The Bears jumped on board soon thereafter and the name became BLESTO. Today's world of televised combines and sophisticated pro days began in Downtown Pittsburgh under the leadership of Ken Stilley, a former Steelers assistant coach.

Butler, took over operations of BLESTO in 1963 and held the leadership post for 44 years, until his retirement in 2007. BLESTO still operates today for at least seven clubs, but it is certainly no longer the only talent evaluation organization of its kind. Of all the things Jack Butler could be proud of, creating the first combine is at the top.

"We actually started the first combine in the NFL in the early 60s," claimed Butler. "It wasn't known to the public, but it was a huge development in the league. At first we brought in college seniors for physicals, because the rules wouldn't allow us to test them. The NFL realized how ridiculous it was to arrange all these kids coming together and not taking advantage of the opportunity. So they took away the rule and allowed all the teams to partake in testing and review. That was the creation of the first combine."

If anyone is qualified to speak to the merits of the Rooney Family, it is Butler. He is still today a very close friend of Art Rooney Jr., who knew a little bit about scouting himself back in the day.

"The Rooneys have always had an uncanny knack for knowing just the right touch when it comes to relationships. The Chief would come to practices and come into the lockerroom and make you feel like he really cared about you. At the same time, he never got too close to compromise his responsibility as an owner. Dan was the same way. Some owners are meddlesome, some are too remote. The Rooneys understand the fine line and maintain the perfect distance."

Ask just about any Steelers old-timer to name one player from the organization who should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The answer you will hear most often is Jack Butler. The Hall of Fame has rigid guidelines, which explains why folks like Dick Hoak and Art Rooney Jr. don't fit into any standard mold. Butler is another one. I firmly believe he will someday have a bust in Canton, but I'm afraid he may not be around to see it. Someday the voters will realize that a 55-year career in the NFL, as both a spectaculer player and innovator, is the the reason why halls of fame exist