Raymond Joseph “Butch” Morse (December 5, 1910 – May 22, 1995)

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Morse later moved to Portland, Oregon, where he graduated from Benson Polytechnic High School in 1931. In addition to football, where he was MVP on Benson’s 1928 city championship team, he played baseball and was the leading scorer for the school’s basketball team in 1930.

Morse attended the University of Oregon, where he was a two-time All-Pacific Coast Conference end, and an All-American in his senior year of 1934, when he was also team co-captain.

Morse signed with the Detroit Lions in 1935, the year the Lions won their first NFL Championship. Morse played for the Lions until 1940, when he was drafted into the United States Army Air Corps. In 1944, he was an assistant coach for the Air Corps’ Randolph Field Flyers in the 1944 Cotton Bowl Classic, in which the Flyers tied the heavily favored Texas Longhorns, 7–7.

He was named to the PIL Hall of Fame in 2004 and inducted into the University of Oregon Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997.