Foster’s Daily Democrat came out firmly opposed to the notion of ending football. “Here in New Hampshire — as in 38 other states — a law has been passed to mandate precautions be taken any time there is an indication of a head injury in any sport,” an editorial in the newspaper read.

The football program at Dover — the team is known as the Green Wave — is big in the community. But so too are soccer, lacrosse and ice hockey — all sports in which players are vulnerable to concussions and other head injuries. Wotton said that 8 of the 68 students who played varsity, junior varsity or freshman football last season sustained concussions. But there were also five concussions in girls’ basketball, nine in boys’ lacrosse and four in cheerleading, he said.

“I appreciate his concern,” Wotton, sitting in his office last week, said of Butler. “This might end up being a good thing in the end. It’s just a semipainful way to get there.”

Butler is not the first school board member in the country to risk proposing what for many seems heretical. Last June, a member of the Council Rock School Board near Philadelphia said that it was “no longer appropriate for public institutions to fund gladiators.” Rush Limbaugh used the comments as further proof that, as he had said on an earlier broadcast, football’s future was under attack from liberal “pantywaists who want to try to take the risk out of everything in life.”

Butler’s celebrity, if a bit baffling to him, has not seemed to wound him. He has heard from a producer at HBO’s “Real Sports” and a woman who identified herself as part of the N.F.L.’s Health and Safety Improvement program. A caller from Brian Williams’s office at NBC seemed mostly to want to know if Butler had grandchildren. And a company sent him a product called the Guardian Cap, a piece of padding fastened by Velcro over a helmet to mitigate the force of head-on collisions.

More locally, any heat Butler has taken seems to stem more than anything from the notion that he had somehow spoken out of turn about a cherished culture in a tight-knit town. Local officials praise his standing in the community while making it clear they stop far short of siding with him about the need to end football.