Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the Great College Football Scandal

In 1962 an Atlanta businessman was accidentally tied into a phone line on which Wally Butts, athletic director of the University of Georgia, was talking to Paul ""Bear'' Bryant, football coach and athletic director of the University of Alabama. Butts gave Bryant information about the Georgia team's plays and the businessman took notes, which eventually made their way to the president of the university. Butts was allowed to resign. Information about the affair spread to the Saturday Evening Postthen engaged in a ``sophisticated muckraking'' campaignwhich published a hastily written and partially inaccurate account. Butts and Bryant both sued the Post; Butts won over $3 million in damages. Kirby, who was the official observer at Butts's trial for football's Southeastern Conference, here offers his own verdict: both Bryant and Butts were guilty of collusion as charged and lied repeatedly; the Post's lawyers were inept and should not have lost the case. An exciting book. (September 26)