Paul Thomas "Butterball" Scull, Sr. (September 4, 1907 – December 11, 1997) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

player. Considered a

triple-threat man In gridiron football, a triple-threat man is a player who excels at all three of the skills of running, passing, and kicking. In modern usage, such a player would be referred to as a utility player. Triple-threat men were the norm in the early day ...

while playing for Penn from 1926 to 1928, he was a consensus first-team All-American halfback in 1928.

Early years

Born in New Jersey, Scull moved with his family to

Lower Merion, Pennsylvania Lower Merion Township is a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It is part of the Philadelphia Main Line. The township's name originates with the county of Merioneth in north Wales. Merioneth is an English-language transcription of the ...

as a boy. He played high school football at

Lower Merion High School Lower Merion High School is a public high school in Ardmore, a community in Philadelphia's Main Line suburbs. It is one of two high schools in the Lower Merion School District; the other one is Harriton High School. Lower Merion serves both Lo ...

from 1922 to 1924, helping lead the team to a 26-0-1 record during his three years as a player.

Penn

Scull played at the halfback and punter positions for the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

from 1926 to 1928. In November 1927, he was elected to serve as the captain of Penn's 1928 football team. He was a consensus first-team All-American in 1928. He holds Penn's all-time record with 312 all-purpose yards in a game. Scull was a member of the Kappa Chapter of

Theta Chi Fraternity Theta Chi () is an international college fraternity. It was founded on April 10, 1856 at Norwich University then-located in Norwich, Vermont, and has initiated more than 200,000 members and currently has over 8,700 collegiate members across Nort ...

. In 1929, Scull was selected as the inaugural recipient of Theta Chi Fraternity's Reginald E.F. Colley Award, the highest award for a collegiate member which recognizes service to alma mater, fraternity, and chapter.

Later years

Scull was one of 11 All-American football players to appear in the 1930 film " Maybe It's Love". He became a physical education instructor at Penn after graduating. In 1964, he was selected as a second-team halfback on the All-Time Philadelphia All Scholastic Team. He was inducted into the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003. In his later years, Scull lived in North Carolina. He was employed for 36 years in the personnel department of Hercules Inc. He died in 1997 at

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scull, Paul 1907 births 1997 deaths American football halfbacks American football punters Penn Quakers football players Penn Quakers men's basketball players Sewanee Tigers football coaches All-American college football players People from Merchantville, New Jersey Players of American football from Camden County, New Jersey People from Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania Players of American football from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Basketball players from Pennsylvania American men's basketball players Lower Merion High School alumni