Wally Butts

Butts was the son of James Wallace Butts Sr. (July 9, 1881 – January 2, 1959) and wife Annie (1881 – ?).

James Wallace Butts Jr. (February 7, 1905 – December 17, 1973) was an American college football player, coach, and athletics administrator.

He coached at Madison (Ga.) A&M from 1928–31; Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, 1932–34; and Male High in Louisville, 1935-37.

Butts lost only ten games in ten years of high school coaching.

Butts was a 1929 graduate of Mercer University where he played college football under coach Bernie Moore, as well as baseball and basketball.

He was an alumnus of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity.

Butts never failed to turn out an undefeated championship team at the three high schools he coached before arriving at the University of Georgia in 1938.

Butts came to the University of Georgia as an assistant to Joel Hunt in 1938.

He served as the head coach at the University of Georgia from 1939 to 1960, compiling a record of 140–86–9.

Butts was also the athletic director at Georgia from 1939 to 1963.

His Georgia Bulldogs football teams won a national championship in 1942 and four Southeastern Conference titles (1942, 1946, 1948, 1959).

During his tenure as head coach, Georgia won its first consensus national championship in 1942 and claimed another national title in 1946.

Butts coached 1942 Heisman Trophy winner Frank Sinkwich and 1946 Maxwell Award winner Charley Trippi.

The 1942 Georgia team won the Rose Bowl over UCLA, finished #2 in the AP Poll, and was named a national championship by a number of selectors.

Butts' teams also won four Southeastern Conference championships (1942, 1946, 1948 and 1959).

As head coach, Butts posted a 140–86–9 record (.615 winning percentage), including a bowl record of 5–2–1.

Ralph Jordan, future head football coach at Auburn University, joined the Georgia coaching staff in October 1946 as an assistant line coach.

Butts was a proponent of the passing game in an era of "three yards and a cloud of dust".

He developed innovative, intricate pass routes that were studied by other coaches.

He was often called "the little round man" as he was five feet, six inches tall and had a squat body.

Hunt left after a 5–4–1 season to take over at the University of Wyoming and Butts was elevated to the position of head coach, which he held for 22 seasons through 1960.

Butts' assistants in his first year as head coach were Bill Hartman, Howell Hollis, Quinton Lumpkin, Jules V. Sikes, Forrest Towns, and Jennings B. Whitworth.

Butts resigned as UGA's head football coach in December 1960.

Johnny Griffith, a former player and assistant coach to Butts, succeeded him as head coach from 1961-63.

He remained as athletic director until February 1963, when he resigned after a scandal erupted over a magazine article alleging corrupt practices, which Butts stridently denied.

In 1963, Butts filed a libel lawsuit against The Saturday Evening Post after it ran "The Story of a College Football Fix" in its March 23, 1963, issue alleging that he and Alabama head coach Bear Bryant had conspired to fix an upcoming Georgia-Alabama game.

The University of Georgia and Georgia Attorney General Eugene Cook conducted separate investigations.

Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, as it ultimately became when it reached the Supreme Court, was a landmark case that expanded the definition of "public figures" in libel cases.

Butts was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1966 and posthumously into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1997.

Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, athletic administration offices and sports museum at the University of Georgia, was built in honor of Butts and his predecessor as coach, Harry Mehre.

After ending his football career, Butts established a credit insurance business in Athens and Atlanta, where he became very successful.

The court ruled in his favor in 1967, and The Saturday Evening Post was ordered to pay $3.06 million to the Butts family in damages, the largest settlement awarded at its time in history.

This settlement was seen as a contributing factor among many others in the demise of the venerable Saturday Evening Post six years later.

Both Butts and Bryant had sued for $10 million each.

Bryant settled for $300,000.

Butts died of a heart attack after returning from a walk in 1973.

He was buried in Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens, Georgia.

In 1986, Professor James Kirby of the University of Tennessee School of Law published Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts and the Great College Football Scandal, which argued that the courts had made the wrong decision.

Kirby had been the Southeastern Conference's official observer at the trial.

He was inducted posthumously into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1997.