COLLEGE ATHLETICS
Sarah K. Fields
Ohio State University
Lies, Libel, and Football: Butts v.
Curtis Publishing
Prior to 1962, Wally Butts was a pantheon of the
University of Georgia (UGA) football program. Butts
had been the Bulldogs head coach from 1939 to 1961,
leading the Dawgs to four Southeastern Conference
(SEC) Championships, one undefeated season, and
eight bowl games. He amassed the second highest
number of victories in Georgia football history, but in
1961 he stepped down as football coach after a
disappointing 1960 season. He remained at UGA as the
athletic director and in that capacity would redefine
libel law for the entire country.
In 1962 the University of Alabama destroyed the
Georgia football team in the annual rivalry game, and in
March of 1963 The Saturday Evening Post published an
article with their explanation as to why the game had
been so lopsided.
George Burnett, an insurance
salesman from Atlanta who was on probation for
passing bad checks, had told the Post that because of
some sort of electronic error, he had been able to listen
to a pre-game telephone conversation between Butts
and Paul Bear Bryant, the coach of Alabama s team.
The story claimed that Butts had told Bryant, among
other things, about specific offensive plays that UGA
planned to execute and about certain signs the Bulldog
quarterback would signal to Bama regarding what play
was about to be run. Burnett and the article charged
Butts and Bryant with fixing the game.
Wally Butts sued Curtis Publishing Company
(owners of the Post) for defamation (the broader tort
under which libel falls), and at the trial level, the jury
awarded him over $60,000 in damages. The lawsuit
would eventually be appealed all the way to the United
States Supreme Court who, in 1967, would take the
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opportunity to make it more difficult for public figures
to win defamation suits. After the Butts case, the public
figure plaintiff would need to prove that the publisher
had acted with actual malice, that is with knowledge of
or reckless disregard for the falsity of the information.
This decision would make it much, much more difficult
for all future public figures to recover damages.
Butts v. Curtis Publishing changed speech law in
America. In its decision, the US Supreme Court
acknowledged that public figures chose to live in the
limelight and that they had a level of access to the
media that the ordinary citizen lacked. Relying on
original case law, contemporary media accounts, as well
as the subsequent history written by the representative
of the SEC (who concluded that Butts and Bryant had
fixed the game), this presentation will examine that
intersection of law and sport. Sport is a powerful
fixture in American society, and that power is reflected
in the legal system. The Butts case occurred at a time
of great tumultuousness in US speech law, and it is
significant that the first case to define public figure did
so with a sporting figure. This paper will explore the
history of the case, its implication for defamation law,
and its subtle reinforcement of the public nature of sport
and its participants.
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