Butts and Bryant meet as friends, exchange warm greetings before the Georgia-Alabama game at Legion Field, Birmingham, Alabama, in 1960.

It’s a story that refuses to lie down and be quiet, even half a century later. In 1963, James Wallace “Wally” Butts, former coach of the University of Georgia’s football team, sued Curtis Publishing, the Post’s parent company, for libel. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided unanimously against Curtis Publishing. Fifty years later, there is growing doubt that it was the right decision.

To understand the doubt, you need to know the background of what the Post claimed was the most shocking sports story since the Chicago Black Sox scandal—a story that began with an overheard phone call and ended by damaging the credibility of America’s most popular magazine.

On September 13, 1962, George Burnett, an insurance salesman in Atlanta, called a friend at a local public relations firm. As sometimes happened in those days, the phone lines became ‘cross-connected.’ Instead of hearing his friend’s voice, he heard a telephone operator identify two famous college football coaches. One was Butts, the athletic director and former coach at the University of Georgia; the other was Paul “Bear” Bryant, coach at the University of Alabama.

Instead of hanging up or announcing his presence, Burnett remained on the line and listened. Over the next 15 minutes, according to what Burnett told the Post, he heard Butts give Bryant details about Georgia’s plays and strategies. In particular, he described the formations that his school’s football team would use against Georgia in the opening game, just eight days away.

Burnett feverishly took notes. When the conversation was done, he had six pages in all.

After the coaches hung up, Burnett redialed the number he originally called. This time the call didn’t get crossed over, and he reached his friend at the public relations firm. Burnett told him what he’d just heard. The friend replied that Butts was, in fact, at the firm and using a phone in a back office. Both men knew Butts and liked him, and after discussing the matter, they agreed to forget the whole business.

The next week, Alabama defeated Georgia, to no one’s surprise. Bryant’s team had been widely expected to win. What was unusual was the score: 35-0. Few gamblers would have bet on which team would win the game. Most of the betting action would concern the difference between the teams’ scores. A gambler who knew the point spread would have been particularly large could have made a lot of money. And Butts was close friends with gamblers.

The lopsided win bothered Burnett. He broke his silence and mentioned the matter with another friend, who passed it on to the new Georgia coach, who informed the University of Georgia’s administrators. They asked Butts about the incident. Butts didn’t deny the charge; in fact he admitted he’d discussed Georgia’s plays with Bryant. But he said the whole incident had been misinterpreted. The next day, Butts resigned from the university.

The university’s regents then called Burnett to a meeting, where they grilled him on what he’d heard. They brought up the fact that Burnett might not be a credible witness since, they’d learned, Burnett had written some bad checks in the past. Perhaps he was hoping to gain by making these charges.

Burnett left the meeting convinced the university was going to dispose of the problem by discrediting him. Expecting to face an accusation of slander from Butts, Burnett spoke with his attorney, who suggested he take his story to The Saturday Evening Post.

Solemnly Wally Butts leads a Georgia football team in locker-room prayer.

“The Story of a College Football Fix” appeared in the March 23, 1963, issue. On March 28, Butts sued Curtis Publishing for $10 million.

The case was heard in the Atlanta federal court, where a jury awarded Butts $60,000 in damages, and $3 million in punitive damages. Stunned, Curtis Publishing appealed the verdict. The 5th Circuit Court upheld the decision in 1965.

Curtis appealed again, believing it could get a favorable hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court, which had recently handed down an important decision concerning the rules of libel. In that case, L.B. Sullivan, the public safety commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama, had sued The New York Times for libel after the paper ran an appeal for Martin Luther King Jr.’s legal defense fund. He believed the wording of the appeal, which criticized the city’s police, had defamed him personally. At the time, several southern states had libel cases pending against newspapers they felt were unfairly reporting on their racial problems.

When the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of The New York Times, Justice Hugo Black explained that malice “even as defined by the court, is an elusive, abstract concept, hard to prove and hard to disprove.” In this instance, the Supreme Court declared that a public official could not be libeled unless a publication showed intentional malice; that is, acting with reckless disregard for the truth.

Which is what the court decided the Post had done. They upheld the lower court’s decision for Butts. But the award of $3 million was appealed, and eventually Butts accepted $460,000.

Over the past 50 years, journalists have revisited the case, wondering how the Post managed to lose the case. There was proof the phone call had taken place. Burnett was a credible witness. Butts was not. Other investigators, both at the University of Georgia and the state attorney general’s office, corroborated what Burnett reported. So why did the Post lose all three trials? The reason might be one, or several, of the following:

• The Post’s attorney was not nearly as good as Butts’ lawyer, who was very skillful in diverting suspicion away from his client.
• The Post‘s attorney knew little about football, while Butts’ attorney had an incredible knowledge and could use this knowledge to discredit the value and usefulness of Burnett’s notes.
• The jury was unfavorably impressed that the Post editors didn’t bother to attend the trial but sent depositions of their testimony instead.
• The Post didn’t pass the story for review among its other editors, who could have caught several minor errors in the story, and would not have approved the sensationalistic tone in the introduction, which stated, “The corrupt here were not professional gamblers but two men—employed to educate and to guide young men. … How often do teachers sell out their pupils? We don’t know—yet. For now we can only be appalled.”
• The magazine was operating out of its depth. It had been trying to rebuild its popularity by engaging in what its publisher called “sophisticated muckraking.” It had successfully dug into several political scandals, and had often run stories about college athletics. But when challenged in this case, they mounted an indifferent defense with the wrong lawyer, and never even showed up in court to speak on their own behalf.

Yet none of these factors changed the fact the phone call took place, other inquiries backed up what Burnett said, and the fact that during the opening game, Georgia players had taunted the Alabama team by calling out the code names of their plays before they were run.

The Supreme Court’s decision in this case still baffles students of journalism law. So the question remains: why did the Post lose the case?

To further understand why doubt lingers, we recommend Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts and the Great College Football Scandal (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1986). The author, James Kirby, taught law at the University of Tennessee and had been dean of Ohio State University’s law school. In 1963, he investigated the Post’s allegations on behalf of the Southeastern Athletic Conference.

Why Did the Post Lose its $10 Million Libel Case? The Saturday Evening Post

After citing the number of deaths that had occurred in college games, sports writer Furman Bisher concluded that the game was definitely getting rough. “It seems to me that the effort to knock an opponent senseless has become more and more obvious in coaching intent.”

In his story, he paid particular attention to the University of Alabama’s team, then coached by Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.

‘Bear’ Bryant, as seen in the days when he coached the University of Kentucky team.

He never said Bryant encouraged or condoned violence, but the implication was there. And Bryant thought the inference was strong enough to be considered libel. On January 4, 1963, he launched a $500,000 suit against the Post.

This lawsuit was still pending when the Post published another exposé on college football. In “The Story of a College Football Fix,” which appeared in March 1963, the Post charged that James Wallace ‘Wally’ Butts, Jr.—the University of Georgia’s athletic director, and recently demoted football coach—had given away game secrets to Bryant that affected the outcome of a Georgia-Alabama game. From this sprang another lawsuit against the Post. This time, Bear Bryant and Wally Butts both sued the Post for libel, each man asking for $10 million in damages.

Coming Up: Curtis Publishing Company vs. Butts 

50 Years Ago: Bear Bryant Sues the Post for a Football-Violence Article The Saturday Evening Post