Dick Butkus, the NFL legend and fearsome Chicago Bears defender has died at 80. According to TMZ, Butkus was discovered unresponsive at his home on Thursday after performing a house check. Paramedics responded shortly after for a “cardiac arrest” call at Butkus’ Malibu home. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Butkus was an early NFL star and college football standout at the University of Illinois before joining the Bears in 1965. He was drafted No. 3 overall.
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Butkus played his entire career with the Bears, amassing six All-NFL selections, two Defensive Player of the Year awards, and eight Pro Bowl appearances from 1965 to 1973. Throughout his career, his playing style and fearsome presence earned him a tin of nicknames. This includes “The Maestro of Mayhem,” “The Enforcer,” “The Animal,” and “The Robot of Destruction.”
Outside of football, Butkus shifted his career to one in front of the camera, recurring on My Two Dads on NBC opposite Paul Reiser and Greg Evigan as two dads raising their teenage daughter, Staci Keanan. He was also on NBC’s Saturday morning series titled Hang Time in 1998, taking over for former NBA star Reggie Theus in the last three seasons. He was also apart of two short-lived dramas, Blue Thunder on ABC with Dana Carvey, and NBC’s Half Nelson with Joe Pesci, which also starred his Miller Lite commercial pal and former NFL star Bubba Smith.
His run in Miller Lite’s ad campaigns in the late ’70s and ’80s was legendary, almost overwhelming audiences with a large lineup of famous names. While Butkus and Smith would be trying to find the holes in a bowling ball before making their own, they’d all have to contend with Rodney Dangerfield, John Madden, Billy Martin, and Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. Butkus talked with The Chicago Tribune in 1998 about his acting career and what the Miller Lite ads allowed him to grow.
“I was worried about making a mistake, because people would say, ‘He’s just a football player,’ so I was harder on myself to do it right,” Butkus said. “Then I learned from the Miller Lite commercials. ‘Who cares if you blow a line?’ It doesn’t matter if you do it in one take or 100 takes, if I can do it better each time…The end result is what people see. Working with Bubba, I was able to add things with facial gestures and stuff.”
Still, Butkus is known for his football career and his status as a rough hand on the field. According to THR, Playboyย once went all out to label him as “the meanest, angriest, toughest, dirtiest son of a bitch in football. An animal, a savage, subhuman.” He ended up being far more than that monster on the football field.
