Before joining the highest court in the land, Byron White was, for a remarkable stretch, the most dominant running back in professional football.
White, nicknamed “Whizzer,” first made his name as a star halfback at the University of Colorado, where he finished as the Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1937.
His college performance was so impressive that he was selected in the first round of the 1938 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates, the franchise now known as the Pittsburgh Steelers.
In his rookie season, White led the entire NFL in rushing yards, earning a record-high contract that made him the highest-paid player in the league at the time.
What made his trajectory truly extraordinary was that White had also won a Rhodes Scholarship, which he deferred in order to play professional football first.
He headed to Oxford in 1939 to take up the scholarship, but his studies were interrupted when the Second World War broke out across Europe.
Returning to the United States, White enrolled at Yale Law School, but even then football was not entirely finished with him.
In a move that would be almost unimaginable by today’s standards, he took a leave of absence from Yale to play the 1940 and 1941 seasons with the Detroit Lions, leading the NFL in rushing for a second time.
After the 1941 season, White hung up his cleats for good and committed himself fully to the law, graduating from Yale Law magna cum laude.
He went on to clerk for Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, one of the most prestigious legal positions available to any young attorney in the country.
President John F. Kennedy appointed White to the United States Supreme Court in 1962, and he served as an Associate Justice for more than three decades until his retirement in 1993.
His career remains one of the most singular in American public life, spanning elite athletic achievement, academic distinction, and service at the very pinnacle of the judiciary.