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Dick Butkus dead at 80: NFL, college football pay tribute to Illinois, Chicago Bears great

zac al-khateeb, usa today network
·4 min read
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Former Illinois and Chicago Bears great Dick Butkus died on Thursdsay. He was 80 years old.

According to a release from the Butkus family (via the Bears' X account, formerly Twitter), he died in his sleep at his home in Malibu, California. With that, one of the great all-time players in American football history — college football and NFL — is gone.

Butkus is arguably one of the best football players ever to hail from the state of Illinois, where his entire football life took place. A Chicago native, he played his high school ball at Chicago Vocational before committing to play for the Fighting Illini, where he played center and linebacker from 1962-64. He was a unanimous All-America selection in 1963 and a consensus selection in 1964 (being selected as a first-teamer in five of six major selectors).

He was selected by the Bears with the No. 3 overall pick of the 1965 NFL Draft (and with the ninth overall pick of the AFL Draft by the Broncos). He ultimately stayed in his home state of Illinois, playing for the Bears from 1965-73. There, he was a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1969-70, a five-time First-Team All-Pro selection and a three-time Second-Team All-Pro selection.

REQUIRED READING: Bears Twitter reacts to news that Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus is dead at 80

He was named to the NFL's All-Decade team for the 1960s and '70s, is a member of the NFL's 75th and 100th anniversary teams and has had his No. 51 jersey retired from the Bears, where he is counted as among the 100 greatest players in franchise history. He is a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and is the namesake for the Dick Butkus Award (given to college football's best linebacker).

Naturally, Butkus' passing created a swell of tributes to one of the greatest linebackers in football history. Here are some of the more notable tributes to Butkus with news of his death:

Football world pays tribute to Dick Butkus

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Dick Butkus dead at 80: Football world pays tribute to Illinois great