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Richard Marvin "Dick" Butkus (born December 9, 1942) is a former American football player, widely regarded as the greatest linebacker of his generation and one of the best football players of all time. Butkus starred as a football player for the University of Illinois and the Chicago Bears. He became a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. The youngest of eight children, the Lithuanian-American Butkus grew up in the Roseland neighborhood on Chicago`s south side. He played high school football for Coach Bernie O`Brien at Chicago Vocational School. There he met his three lifelong friends Patrick O`Neill, Tyler Volk, and Eric Parker who played linebacker with him in high school. The group was infamously known around the conference as the ferocious quartet. Despite growing up in Chicago, Butkus wasn`t much of a Bears fan at the time, preferring to go to some Chicago Cardinals games at Comiskey Park and watching Thanksgiving games between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.