Saturday, September 27, 2014

Dave Butz Set for Sept. 27 NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salute



IRVING, Texas  (Sept. 25, 2014) – Purdue and The National Football Foundation (NFF) & College Hall of Fame announced today that they will jointly honor Dave Butz with an NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salute Sept. 27 in West Lafayette during the game between Purdue and Iowa. Coverage of the game will start at Noon ET on the Big Ten Network.

“This is indeed a great honor,” Butz said in a Purdue release after the announcement in May. “There are a lot of great ball players in the College Football Hall of Fame, and I am very pleased to be a part of it. I had an outstanding group of teammates at Purdue, and I'm very happy to represent them and the university.”

Dave Butz   Purdue Hall of Fame, College Football HOF
The NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salute program is a hallowed tradition that began with the inaugural class in 1951, and to this day the salutes remain the first of numerous activities in each inductee’s Hall of Fame experience. During the NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salutes, each inductee returns to his alma mater to accept a Hall of Fame plaque that will remain on permanent display at the institution. The events take place on the field during a home game, and many inductees cite the experience as the ultimate capstone to their careers, providing them one more chance to take the field and hear the crowd roar their name.

A member of Purdue’s All-Time Team, defensive stalwart Butz earned First Team All-America honors during his Hall of Fame career as a Boilermaker from 1970-72.

“Dave Butz was a force to be reckoned with on the football field,” said NFF President and CEO
Steve Hatchell. “His size and athletic ability allowed him to terrorize offensive linemen during his Boilermaker career. We are thrilled to honor him in front of the Purdue faithful at Ross-Ade Stadium.”

A Consensus First-Team All-American as a senior in 1972, Butz took home the Zipp Award as college football’s most outstanding player, and he was named a finalist for the Lombardi Award. A First Team All-Big Ten honoree in 1972, Butz registered 108 tackles, 21 tackles for loss and eight pass breakups for his career. The senior team captain participated in the East-West Shrine Game and the Senior Bowl, where he was named Defensive MVP.

Drafted fifth overall in the 1973 NFL Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals, Butz played 14 of his 16 seasons with the Washington Redskins, leading them to victories in Super Bowls XVII and XXII. The NFL’s “ironman,” he missed only four games his entire career. He retired in 1989 having played in more games than any other Redskin in team history.

The Lafayette, Ala., native is enshrined in both the Purdue Athletics and Senior Bowl Halls of Fame. An accomplished motivational speaker, Butz appears at events for more than a dozen organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and Special Olympics while also supporting the fundraising efforts for the Children’s Hospital and Ronald McDonald House.

Butz becomes the seventh Boilermaker player to be inducted, joining
Otis Armstrong (1970-72), Bob Griese (1964-66), Mark Herrmann (1977-80), Cecil Isbell (1935-37), Leroy Keyes (1966-68) and Mike Phipps (1967-69). Five coaches with stops in West Lafayette are in the Hall: William Dietz (1921), Jack Mollenkopf (1956-69), Jim Phelan (1922-29), Andy Smith (1913-15) and Jim Young
(1977-81).

Including the 2014 class, only 948 players and 207 coaches have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame from the nearly 5.06 million people who have played or coached the game over the past 145 years. In other words, only two ten-thousandths of one percent (.0002) of those who have set foot on the gridiron have earned the distinction. Click here for a complete list of players and coaches in the Hall.

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