Dan Jenkins introduced Dick Butkus to the nation with the first sentence of his cover story for the Oct. 12, 1964, issue of Sports Illustrated.

“If every college football team had a linebacker like Dick Butkus,” Jenkins wrote, “all fullbacks would soon be 3 feet tall and sing soprano.”

The city, the state and the rest of the Midwest already were familiar with Butkus. The Far South Side native was one of the best players Chicago ever produced, and after a dominant career at Vocational he became the Big Ten’s best player at Illinois.

He was a year away from joining his hometown Bears, with whom he became a legend still spoken about in hushed tones 46 years after his final game — even though he never made the playoffs and enjoyed two winning seasons out of nine in the NFL.

Butkus was just that good.

What made the 6-foot-3, 245-pound middle linebacker different from every other player in the 99-year history of the Bears and the NFL was the ferocious way he played. His highlight reels still are shocking for their violence, as he was able to tap into a part of himself that even the most hardened professional football players find difficult to reach.

He simply had no regard for his opponents.

The Pro Football Hall of Famer died Thursday at age 80 at his home in Malibu, Calif., his family confirmed.

Rams defensive end Deacon Jones, a Hall of Famer and one of the most feared defensive players ever, once said: “I called him a maniac. A stone maniac. He was a well-conditioned animal, and every time he hit you, he tried to put you in the cemetery, not the hospital.”

The films tell the story. In them, Butkus pushes back guards and centers with ease, slams quarterbacks to the ground and chases down and finishes off wide receivers.

The most striking moments occur when a running back hits a hole with a full head of steam, meets Butkus there and is propelled backward at an even higher rate of speed, like a four-wheeler suddenly thrown in reverse and giving its driver whiplash.

Dave Osborn, a tough 6-foot, 208-pound Viking who played halfback and fullback and made the 1970 Pro Bowl, told the Tribune’s Don Pierson on Feb. 6, 1979: “With my running style, when I got hit by a linebacker, I usually could drag him 2 yards. When Butkus hit me, I’d go backwards 2 yards.”

Lions center Ed Flanagan, a longtime Butkus nemesis from his days at Purdue, added, “Our backs were half-scared to death of him. If their number was called in the huddle, their eyes would look like two big marbles.”

In the NFL Films production “The Best Ever: Professionals,” between jarring hits, Butkus says, “It was all the same objective. Not only to tackle and put the guy down, but also to maybe put it in his mind that it’s not gonna be just a plain-old tackle, fall down and go boom and lift the guy up and go back. That wasn’t the way I wanted to get the point across.”

Home-video viewers were not the only ones who wore out the rewind button while watching Butkus highlights.

“Our own coaches used to run the film back and forth because they couldn’t believe it,” Bears center Rich Coady told Pierson.

Besides his violence, the next-most-striking aspect about Butkus’ reel is his skill, especially in pass coverage. He finished his career with 22 interceptions, and he did it his way. After some of his picks, Butkus wagged the ball in the nearest receiver’s face before embarking on his return, taunting his opponent as if he were a younger kid on the playground in his Roseland neighborhood.

“Most of the time it was like a man out there playing against children,” Coady said.

Butkus’ tactics were not limited to Bears opponents. In John Mullin’s 2003 book, “Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline,” Baltimore Colts center Bill Curry said, “He even intimidated officials. He’d take the ball away from somebody after the play and shake it in the official’s face, and the official pointed their way and gave them the ball.”

Bill George, Mike Singletary or Brian Urlacher would be an easy choice for the best middle linebacker in most teams’ histories. With the Bears they are, unquestionably, second-best at best.

As the voice-of-God narration in “Best Ever: Professionals” intoned: “No one has played middle linebacker better than Dick Butkus. And it’s not likely that anyone ever will. He was the most dominant defensive player the game has ever known.”

Pierson wrote on Feb. 4, 1979: “Some people are born to play football. Football was born for Dick Butkus.”

His size, speed, instincts and ferocity made Butkus the perfect middle linebacker. Ross Brupbacher, who played next to Butkus as an outside linebacker for the Bears from 1970-72, said, “If you wanted to put one together like a Frankenstein, you couldn’t have put a better one together.”

“Uh-oh,” outside linebacker Doug Buffone — a Bear for 14 years and a teammate of Butkus for eight — said upon hearing his teammate’s description. “If Butkus hears Bru said that, he’ll choke him.”

Butkus was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. In 1994 he was named to the NFL’s 75th Anniversary Team. The NFL Network named him the 10th-best player of all time in 2010, and a New York Daily News panel voted him No. 8 in 2014.

In 2001, Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman ranked Butkus the best middle linebacker ever, leading a top five of Ray Lewis, Joe Schmidt, Willie Lanier and Ray Nitschke.

Butkus played nine seasons for the Bears, starting all 119 games he played. He was named first-team All-Pro five times and second-team once and he was voted to the Pro Bowl after his first eight seasons. He’s the Bears’ all-time leader with 27 fumble recoveries.

The Hall of Fame named Butkus to its All-Decade teams in both the 1960s and the ’70s. The only other Bear to be named to two such teams was Walter Payton, in the 1970s and ’80s.

Coady’s man-against-boys analogy held true for Butkus from an early age. At Vocational, coach Bernie O’Brien sat Butkus during scrimmages so he wouldn’t hurt teammates. Sports Illustrated’s Robert F. Jones, in the Sept. 21, 1970 cover story on Butkus, described CVS as “one of those technical schools where the corridors smell of sawed wood and burnt steel from the shops, where the lockers bear two-inch-deep dents from tough kids punching out their frustrations and where you can always find bloodstains from fistfights in the john.”

Butkus was the toughest kid at the tough school.

In yet another SI profile, this time from Sept. 6, 1993, Butkus told Rick Telander of a time he excused himself from practice to deal with four boys in a car who were harassing his future wife, Helen Essenberg.

“Without hesitation,” Telander wrote, “Butkus ran off the field, chased the car onto 87th Street, dived through the open front window on the passenger side and, in full uniform, thrashed each of the passengers. Then he climbed out of the car and walked back to the field.”

At Illinois, he led the Illini to their most recent Rose Bowl win, 17-7 over Washington on Jan. 1, 1964. He won the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the Big Ten’s best player the next season and finished third in the 1964 Heisman Trophy balloting behind quarterbacks John Huarte of Notre Dame and Tulsa’s Jerry Rhome.

The Bears selected Butkus third in the 1965 draft and paired him with the fourth pick, Kansas running back Gale Sayers. They almost instantly became two of the game’s best players, demonstrating elite talent and skill as rookies. Sayers beat out Butkus for rookie of the year, Butkus was named defensive rookie of the year and both made first-team All-Pro.

George, the Bears’ middle linebacker since he practically invented the position in 1954, knew his days were numbered after watching Butkus take part in one practice, he said in Richard Whittingham’s 1991 book, “What Bears They Were.”

“I’ve never seen anybody who was such a cinch,” George said. “From the day Dick showed up in camp I knew I was out of a job.”

Despite the presence of Butkus and Sayers, two of the best ever to play in the NFL, the Bears of their time were mostly terrible. After a 9-5 season in their rookie year of 1965 and a mediocre 7-6-1 mark in 1967, the Bears never had another winning season with their Class of 1965 superstars.

With wins scarce, Butkus competed with himself. His greatest enjoyment came from his personal rivalries with offensive linemen, particularly the NFC Central Division’s great centers: Mick Tingelhoff of the Vikings, a Hall of Famer; Flanagan, the Lions’ four-time Pro Bowl selection; and Ken Bowman, who started for three championship teams with the Packers.

During the waning stages of a loss to the Lions, the Bears still had all three timeouts. As the Lions ran out the clock, Butkus called time after three consecutive plays so he could take three more runs at Flanagan.

Butkus looked to intimidate before games even started. During warmups he often went to the other team’s side of the field to mark his territory.

“I was centering for punts in the pregame drill, and I took my warmup jacket off,” Flanagan told Pierson. “I looked up and there was Butkus wiping his feet on it.”

Tinglehoff added: “I was centering in warmups once, and I felt something wet on my hands. I couldn’t figure out what it was because the sun was shining. I looked up and Butkus was standing there spitting on me. True story.”

The way Butkus acted could be good or bad for his teammates, or sometimes both. Buffone and Brupbacher often were either bailed out of or put into tough situations by Butkus.

One one occasion, Buffone was, in his words, “getting worked over” by Lions tight end Charlie Sanders. Buffone told Butkus he needed some help.

“(Butkus) gave that little chuckle, like a little kid, and said, ‘Give him a shove my way,’ ” Buffone said. “I did, and the collision was unbelievable.”

On the other hand, Brubacher said, “It got disconcerting on some occasions. He had a violent temper, and he really worked himself up to play. … He did his best to make sure everybody on the field had blood in their eyes.

“Now that’s a bad situation when you have Charlie Sanders out there with blood in his eyes. Dick would purposely try to make those people angry — call them names, give them a little shot when getting off the pile. That’s what created a problem for you. You had to be ready.”

Butkus started three fights during a game against the Lions in 1969, and in a 1970 preseason game against the St. Louis Cardinals he was flagged for four personal-foul penalties.

Was he a dirty player?

“Oh, yeah,” said Flanagan, who like Butkus entered the NFL in 1965. “He’d kick, spit, grab my face mask, anything to get to the ball carrier. He bit me once in a pileup. In the leg. He was just nasty.

“He’d spit on the ball, insult me, my mother — we had a real resentment going. He used to love me on punts. He’d take three steps back and try to kill me.”

Whether they liked or disliked Butkus — there was no in between — his opponents always respected him.

“Listen,” Flanagan said. “We never liked each other. We sat two lockers away in some Pro Bowl games and never talked to each other. But I’ve played against the best — all of them — and he’s right up there. You can’t take that away from him.”

Tingelhoff added: “He hammered me and I tried to hammer him. It’s no picnic out there. I might have clipped him a few times. … He might have hit me with a forearm. That’s the way the game is. He was rough and rugged, and you had to respect a guy like that.”

The Vikings center said Butkus proved his intelligence by always being near the ball and seldom putting himself out of position: “He had an uncanny knack of knowing where the ball was going.”

Butkus expanded on his instincts in great detail to Sports Illustrated’s Jones .

“I can see it all about to happen,” Butkus said. “At the key moment — the instant of the snap — I somehow know, most of the time, just how the flow pattern will develop. It’s all there in the backdrop. I stare right through the center and the quarterback, right through their eyes. I watch for the keys, and they are very tiny keys, believe me. Tiny little twitches of their shoulders and their heads and their feet and eyes. There’s just this split second, before it all starts to move, when you put those keys together and you know — you damned well know — how it’s going.”

Butkus liked to analyze. To a point. When Brupbacher, a future lawyer, joined the team and began musing about defensive theories and philosophies, it didn’t last long.

“Sometimes he’d go off on intellectual tangents in meetings,” Buffone said, “and Butkus would grab him by the neck and push him down. Bru would be yelling for me to help him. I’d say, ‘Hey, do I look stupid?’ ”

Like Sayers, knee injuries ended Butkus’ career. Before the 1973 season Butkus and the Bears agreed to five one-year contracts of $115,000 apiece. He had played in constant pain for three years, and during the first season of his new deal, it became too much.

Butkus retired at 31, and in 1974 he sued the Bears and their team doctor, Ted Fox, for $1.6 million for mistreating his injuries and administering painkillers that Butkus and his attorney claimed hastened his knee’s deterioration. The court battle lasted two years before the Bears and Butkus settled for $600,000.

Bears owner George Halas blacklisted Butkus during and immediately after the court case, but Papa Bear never could turn his back completely on a player that good. When the Bears owner published his autobiography, “Halas by Halas,” in 1979, Butkus showed up to a book signing. Halas, according to Jeff Davis’ 2005 biography, “Papa Bear: The Life and Legacy of George Halas,” wrote an inscription above his signature.

“To Dick Butkus, the greatest player in the history of the Bears. You had that old zipperoo!”

While Halas and Butkus returned to speaking terms, forgiveness was not in the cards. Halas never got around to retiring Butkus’ number even though the linebacker obviously deserved the honor. The stubborn decision meant that Sayers’ number also remained unretired. Halas wished to honor Sayers, with whom he never had any trouble, but he knew Bears fans would react negatively to one of the paired greats being honored without the other, so he shelved the issue indefinitely.

Halas’ feelings on the issue were known, however, to those paying attention. According to the Bears, replacement player Steve Trimble in 1987 was the only Bear to wear No. 40 after Sayers retired. After Butkus left the Bears, his No. 51 was worn by six players: Mel Rogers, Doug Becker, Bruce Herron, Kelvin Atkins, Jim Morrissey and replacement player Mark Rodenhauser.

Butkus reentered the fold about 18 months after Halas died on Oct. 31, 1983. In 1985, Butkus, who had parlayed his humorous appearances in Miller Lite commercials into a full-time acting career, joined play-by-play man Wayne Larrivee and color commentator Jim Hart as a third man in the team’s WGN radio booth.

Exactly 11 years after Papa Bear’s death, on Halloween night 1994, his grandson, Bears President Michael McCaskey, finally retired Butkus No. 51 and Sayers’ No. 40. McCaskey figured the move would boost his flatlining popularity. Instead the ceremony symbolized both the dysfunction of the 1990s Bears and the sorry state of the team during the days of Butkus and Sayers.

It rained 2.26 inches that day in Chicago with 45-mph winds when the Bears played the Packers on “Monday Night Football.” The rollicking Pack, led by superstars Brett Favre and Reggie White, frolicked in the downpour to the tune of a 33-6 win. At halftime, the soaked Butkus and Sayers were honored during the deluge in front of a sparse crowd due to the weather.

Butkus, now 76 and a longtime California resident, has stayed involved with football with his Butkus Awards for linebackers at the pro, college and prep levels and his “I Play Clean” anti-steroids program.

To this day, almost five decades after his career ended playing for Bears teams that went a combined 48-74-4, no NFL player has surpassed the standard Butkus set for ferocious football.

“You don’t start early in life and become a Butkus,” Brupbacher told Pierson in 1979. “You’re just born, and through certain breaks you get that opportunity to realize all that ability. That’s what happened to him.

“I don’t think there will ever be another one. He has to be the toughest to ever play.”

As part of the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the Bears’ 100th season, the Tribune’s Bears reporters and editors ranked the 100 best players in franchise history. Click here for the full list.