Butler & Brooks Remain an Example of What it Means to be a Leader/Winner
By CHRIS HAVEL
GREEN BAY – On a gorgeous July evening in 1996 on the St. Norbert College campus, LeRoy Butler brazenly stated the Green Bay Packers’ singular goal.
“We expect to be playing in the Super Bowl come January,” he said. “We don’t hope to be there, or think we can be there – we EXPECT to be there.”
The Packers’ Pro Bowl strong safety – much to coach Mike Holmgren’s chagrin – simply said what a majority of players and fans were thinking.
Six months later, Butler and the Packers realized their potential and fulfilled their promise with a 35-21 victory over New England in Super Bowl XXXI at New Orleans.
In two weeks the Packers will embark upon their 11th training camp since Butler’s prophecy came to fruition. The expectations are in line with a team coming off an 8-8 season, which is to say, they are realistically optimistic. And while the team’s ultimate goal remains unchanged there is too much work and too little time for bold predictions.
That is best left to the glorious past.
It is why the stories of Butler’s audacity, Robert Brooks’ tenacity and the 1996 team’s supremacy will be warmly rekindled next weekend at a 2007 Packer Hall of Fame induction ceremony that features the exceptional strong safety and wide receiver.
Butler was that rare soul who could talk the talk and walk the walk.
If Reggie White was the heart of the Packers’ vaunted defense, Butler was its soul, not to mention its self-appointed master of ceremonies. When he spoke in the locker room, the assembled media listened. He was good for a minimum of one headline per session. He knew how to play his position, and the media, with equal aplomb.
What set him apart from so many of the NFL’s shameless self-promoters was his keen sense of the impact of his words. He didn’t merely speak to hear himself talk. There was frequently a meaning behind the message. He was the self-appointed compass that pointed the team in the right direction – always “S” – for success.
Butler spoke because he was good at it, and he enjoyed it, and he knew that a subtle chide here or a succinct compliment there could spur teammates to their best.
Privately, he stifled his pride and allowed fellow safety Eugene Robinson a platform from which to share his experience and expertise. Robinson was a terrific student of the game with an uncommon ability to dissect film. If Butler were a lesser man, and a lesser teammate, he might have sabotaged rather than promoted Robinson’s words and wisdom.
That selfless attitude pervaded the locker room.
Brooks, the media-shy receiver, was a different breed.
The tough, talented wideout led by an off-the-charts work ethic. He practiced rather than preached, and he was determined to rely on a practical application of that sometimes vague and cliché notion called 100 percent. Brooks gave it, and in doing so he gave his teammates a very tangible example of pushing one’s self to the limit. To paraphrase the great Vince Lombardi, hard work wasn’t a sometime thing with Brooks. It was an all-the-time thing.
Brooks commanded respect not with his words, but with his washboard abs, swollen knuckles (from catching so many passes) and high-energy approach to his profession. If his charismatic smile didn’t always light up the locker room it wasn’t because he was moody. It was because he was spent from another day’s hard work.
Butler and Brooks are being inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame for their talent, to be sure, but that is only part of the secret to their success. It was Butler’s unflinching confidence and keen insight into his teammates’ emotional state that made him an unparalleled leader, and it was Brooks’ unwavering work ethic and absolute inability to cut corners that made him a special player.
Together, they remind fans of the Packers’ past greatness, and they remain an enduring example to the 2007 team of what it means to be a leader, a teammate, a winner.
Butler and Brooks didn’t seek immortality.
It found them.
It is something for the 2007 Packers to remember as training camp draws near.
Chris Havel is a freelance writer, best-selling author and host of northeast Wisconsin’s top-rated sports radio talk show, Sports Line, heard Monday through Friday from 4 to 6 p.m. on Sports Radio 107.5 FM and 1400 AM THE FAN. He writes a weekly column exclusively for Packers Fan Tours’ Website throughout the 2007 season.
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