By Taylor Nigrelli
Sports Editor
Because St. Bonaventure is such a small school that hasn’t fielded a varsity football team in 62 years, its connection to pro football is often overlooked.
So, when Buffalo Bills (the geographically closest NFL franchise to St. Bonaventure) owner Ralph Wilson died last week, it’s unlikely many people thought he had any ties to the school. But in a small way, he did.
The school’s most prominent connection to pro football for many years was Jack Butler. The 1951 graduate excelled at the professional level, playing nine seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Butler retired in 1959 due a devastating knee injury.
By that time, he’d been named to the All-NFL team three times and the Pro Bowl four times, eventually ending up on the NFL’s official 1950’s All-decade team.
According St. Bonaventure school president, Sister Margaret Carney O.S.F, Wilson meant a great deal to Butler.
In 2012, Butler was selected to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. After hearing the news, Butler invited Sister Margaret to join him in his traveling party for his induction in Canton, Ohio that August.
“When he was going to be inducted, he called me and asked me to go down for the ceremony,” Sister Margaret said. “I said ‘Jack, you have so many more important people to invite.’ He said ‘No, I really want you to be there.’”
Before the trip, Butler told Sister Margaret a story about his early post-retirement days.
Upon retirement, Butler attempted to get into the coaching business. In 1960, he was hired by Wilson as an assistant coach for the Bills inaugural season in the newly-formed American Football League.
However, Butler’s knee hadn’t fully healed yet, and he had difficulty running up and down the field to keep up with the players during practice. Because of his immobility, Butler felt useless as a coach. He approached Wilson roughly halfway through the season and announced his resignation.
While Wilson accepted Butler’s resignation, he kept him on the payroll for the rest of the season. Butler never forgot this and, after more than 50 years, he still felt compelled to share the story with Sister Margaret.
“I think he realized, ‘hey, here’s a heck of player, who has a crippling knee injury.’ Back in those days, players didn’t make big salaries, so what’s the guy going to do? He’s already half a year in, he’s not going to be hired elsewhere.”
Butler later went on to join and eventually direct a scouting combine that worked for multiple teams. The company became the model for modern college scouting.
This, along with his on-the-field accomplishments, earned him enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
After the enshrinement ceremony, it’s customary for the players the Hall of Fame’s staff to give each honoree a wing of the museum to have a reception in. So it was only fitting that Butler’s received the Ralph Wilson wing, built through the donations of the Bills owner, for his reception.
“I walked into the party in that room that night thinking, ‘isn’t this cool?’” Sister Margaret said. “He got to celebrate getting into the Hall of Fame in a room built by a man that really helped him out early in his career.”
Wilson was known far more for football than any religious affiliations. He didn’t speak often about his religious beliefs (his Wikipedia page doesn’t mention it once), and he didn’t make it part of his persona. But Sister Margaret said she believes he conveys Franciscan values as well as anyone.
“There’s a phrase used by theologians: the anonymous Christian….There are certain values that good human beings try to follow,” Sister Margaret said. “In the case of people like Ralph Wilson, they have opportunities to create help in a community that makes all the difference in the world to whether a community is moving forward or going backward.”
