So many folks remember Dick Butkus for that other stuff. There were the commercials, oh, those Miller Lite gems of the mid-1970s when he shared the screen with Bubba Smith (”Great taste, less filling”). Then everything else followed, ranging from movies to TV to sportscasting to aching like crazy down the stretch of his life that ended Thursday after 80 years.

For me, along with other midwesterners who shaped our football mindsets through the NFL’s barbaric yet addictive Black and Blue Division, nothing topped the primary reason Butkus became the 1973 version of Nick Bosa, the league’s wealthiest defensive player these days, according to Forbes.

Bosa turned his 2022 Defensive Player of the Year Award into a five-year deal worth $170 million with the San Francisco 49ers.

Which brings us back to Butkus, the most famous (or infamous) Monster of the Midway.

If Bosa was the defensive player of last year, Butkus was the defensive player of the 20th century. He spent 50 years ago shocking the senses and the wallets of Chicago Bears officials by negotiating a five-year contract to continue his lifetime career with his hometown team.

The Butkus deal was worth . . .

$575,000.

Um, $575,000?

That’s about how much Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald ($31.7 million per year) and Cleveland Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett ($25 million per year) now get for fastening their chinstrap.

Even so, $575,000 over five years for an NFL defender in 1973 was incredible, spectacular and mindboggling. Those also were just some of the words describing Butkus at middle linebacker during his previous eight years with the Bears. He never missed a Pro Bowl during any of those seasons, and he was a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year winner.

Still, those weren’t the primary reasons Butkus eventually got paid at nearly an unprecedented level for a defender of the mid-1970s.

He was scary.

He was wonderfully scary.

He was full blast on every play with the intent of making as many opponents as possible feel his presence throughout their body.

He was the epitome of that Black and Blue Division, where the frequently nasty Bears of George “Papa Bear” Halas resided with Vince Lombardi and his bruisers on the Green Bay Packers. Then you had the Purple People Eaters of the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, who lost more often than not, but who delivered their share of licks through Alex Karras and the rest.

Butkus was into all of that, but he cared more about operating never less than brilliantly every Sunday despite a Bears team with Pro Football Hall of Famer Gale Sayers and nobody else worth mentioning.

Sayers rocked as a running back who returned kicks in electrifying fashion, but Butkus was the reason I convinced my Milwaukee high school football coaches duiring the early 1970s to stop placing me and my quick feet in the offensive backfield instead of where my heart resided.

It was middle linebacker.

Here’s the rest of the story: Before Wisconsin, I grew up during the 1960s in South Bend, Indiana, where the University of Notre Dame served as our college football passion within those city limits. In contrast, our NFL allegiance was 80 miles west to the original Bad News Bears during the final years of Halas as an overmatched NFL head coach preparing to hire a few more.

Even though Sayers was an oddity on those Chicago teams with his greatness wrapped around flash, I was obsessed with the other guy. I wanted to become the African American version of Butkus someday. So after we moved to Milwaukee in the early 1970s — following AT&T transferring my father to Cincinnati and then to Chicago — my dream evolved into reality.

Boy, did it.

When Butkus signed his $575,000 deal before the 1973 NFL season, I was all eyes and ears regarding my all-time favorite pro football player, and I was heading into my senior year for my Milwaukee high school team.

At middle linebacker, of course.

Actually, we played a 4-4 defense, so I was one of two inside linebackers, but to me, I was still Dick Butkus Jr. With help from more than a few teeth-rattling tackles and NFL Music dancing around my subconscious dominated by Butkus, Butkus and more Butkus, our 1973 James Madision High School football team went undefeated for the Milwaukee City Conference title (no Wisconsin playoffs back then).

Not only that, but I led the team in tackles.

Butkus wasn’t as fortunate. Due to the times, he resembled many of his peers by ignoring ailments that called for resting or retiring. A chronic bad knee forced him to leave football for good after the ninth game of the 1973 NFL season, and when he officially departed in May 1974 at 31, he sued the Bears for $1.6 million over mostly inadequate medical care.

Eventually, Butkus settled with the Bears for $600,000, and then he was on his way to those other things.

The same for me.

After high school football, when Butkus was selling beer instead of crushing quarterbacks, I began writing more, and I’m still writing.