Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White was born on June 8 in 1917. White, who passed away on April 15 in 2002, has the distinction of being the only U.S. Supreme Court Justice to also have a distinguished football career.
Justice White served on the U.S. Supreme Court from April 1962 to June 1993. In his obituary in 2002, the New York Times wrote that while White often voted with the conservative justices, such as dissenting in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) and Roe v. Wade (1973), other times he went a different direction, so on the Supreme Court “no ideological label ever fit Justice White comfortably.” Where one could label Byron White was on the football field, where he was a stellar athlete.
In college, White played football halfback for the Colorado Buffaloes of the University of Colorado at Boulder, where a newspaper columnist gave White the nickname “Whizzer.” After graduation, starting in 1938, White played in the NFL for the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers) and the Detroit Lions. He played in the NFL for three years at high pay while leading the league in rushing for two seasons before he went in the Navy during World War II.
After returning from the war, White decided to pursue a law career, enrolling in Yale Law School and starting the trajectory that would take him to President John F. Kennedy appointing him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although he left his football days behind, White could not escape the nickname he disliked, as people continued to call him “Whizzer.”
A video of the game was recorded by J. Rudolph Jaeger, who became famous as an esteemed brain surgeon. The video shows White on the football field in the 1938 Cotton Bowl of Rice Institute (later Rice University) vs. Colorado University. Most of the video shows the game from a distance, but White is in the lighter colored uniform with number 24, playing halfback at a time the position featured all kinds of responsibilities like running, throwing, kicking and playing defense. Near the beginning of the video, though, the camera catches the young White in close-up preparing for the game.
[February 2016 Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available on YouTube, but you may see some clips of the game on the Rice Owls website.]
In that 1938 game, Rice ultimately won what was only the second Cotton Bowl Classic. Byron White had led the Colorado Buffaloes through an unbeaten season, and at the beginning of the Cotton Bowl, it looked like that run of wins would continue. The Buffaloes jumped off to a 14-0 lead after White caught an interception and ran 47 yards for a touchdown, which would be the longest interception run in Cotton Bowl history for 50 years. White even kicked the extra point.
But after that score, Rice’s halfback Ernie Lain, who had come in off the bench, took control of the game, leading the Rice Owls to a 28-14 victory. No one would match Lain’s feat of throwing three touchdowns in the Cotton Bowl until Doug Flutie did it in 1985.
Lain went on to play for the Washington Redskins and passed away in 1987 while White was serving on the Supreme Court. But on that date in 1938, without any idea of what paths their lives would take or whatever other accomplishments would come, White and Lain played like football gods.
Today, the NFL Players Association annually presents the Byron “Whizzer” White Award, its highest honor, to recognize “players who go above and beyond to perform community service in their team cities and hometowns.”
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