My daughter’s husband, Jason Shaneyfelt of Omaha, wrote the following article for Through These Gates, a fan-run site for Nebraska sports. I want to share his writing talents with you.
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Jack Hoffman’s story began long before the 2013 spring game. It began when his father wrote a letter to Jack’s favorite player, Rex Burkhead, just hoping to get a response. Maybe even get to do a meet and greet with him and Jack.
Rex, displaying the character we all know of him, didn’t hesitate to go above and beyond, immediately becoming an older brother figure for Jack. Hanging out with him, inviting him to practice, and getting the entire team to adopt him as an honorary teammate.
In time the story grew.
Husker Nation caught wind of it and became invested in the brave battle of little Jack Hoffman. The 2013 spring game wasn’t his public debut at Memorial Stadium, but it was the previous fall when he and fellow pediatric brain cancer patient Isiah Casillas helped lead Nebraska out of the tunnel walk against Wisconsin, hoisted up by Rex and Quincy Enunwa to touch the horseshoe. Casillas tragically passed away just two months later at the age of six.
And then a few months later, one of the most famous runs in the 100-plus-year history of Memorial Stadium occurred on the most unlikely of days, the fourth quarter of a spring scrimmage.
The idea was hatched by NU Director of Football Operations Jeff Jamrog along with Fullback CJ Zimmerer and, of course, given the green light by Bo Pelini. Wide Receivers coach Rich Fisher drew up the play. Zimmerer and Taylor Martinez then lined up in the backfield with Hoffman. Burkhead had exhausted his eligibility by that point (although he returned for the spring game), but the contributions of all these people working together to make this special moment happen show how much Jack had truly been embraced by the entire team by that point. I remember where I was. I was about halfway up North Stadium wearing an old, beat-up white Nebraska cap backward and a bizarre t-shirt that depicted Herbie as an infant in a baby carrier. A true display of my sense of humor at the time (Okay, that’s still my sense of humor). I was not dressed for such an occasion.
I had no clue what would happen when I walked into Memorial Stadium that day.
I still remember seeing Jack waddle out onto the field and my brain slowly piecing together what was about to occur. Breathlessly, I tried to describe the significance of what we were all about to witness to two of my friends who I knew weren’t as chronically plugged into Nebraska football as I am and were unfamiliar with the story of Jack Hoffman.
No one who was there will ever forget it. In my memory, I still see the play, not through the lenses of the cameras that immortalized the run, but through the angle I had in the stands that day. I still love watching the video from the broadcast.
On the day Jack died, I was struck at how the radio call by Greg Sharpe has taken on an additional layer of poignance recently as he fights his own battle with cancer.
The moment soon went viral and spring-boarded Jack into national fame. He won an ESPY for Sports Moment of the Year in 2013 and his run inspired several other teams to conduct similar plays for children battling terrible diseases. Most importantly of all, the Hoffmans redirected that spotlight to shine on TeamJack, an organization they had founded in 2011. To date, TeamJack has raised over $12 million for pediatric brain cancer and Jack’s continued legacy will ensure it raises millions more in the years to come.
But Jack did not stay that little seven-year-old boy forever. We think of him like that in our memories, but it’s perhaps unfair to do so. He lived almost 12 more years and became a teenager, a high school football player, a high school graduate, and a college student with dreams for the future.
Jeff Jamrog, the architect of the idea to hand him the ball in the spring game and now head coach at Midland University, offered Jack a full-ride football scholarship to play for his team. Jack turned it down because he wanted to go to the University of Nebraska-Kearney to study pre-law. Jack had ambitious plans for his future. Nineteen is way too young, but he lived a life well beyond that moment in 2013. He kept in touch with Rex throughout his NFL career and remained an avid Nebraska fan.
For a few years, Jack and his dad sat a few rows beneath our family at Memorial Stadium. I ran into him a small handful of times. I won’t go so far as to claim I knew him in any significant way, but it was heartwarming to physically see him in person growing up beyond that little boy we all remember from the spring of 2013.
Jack’s legacy is far more than that day.
A few years after that spring game, Minnesota and Nebraska created the $5 Bits of Broken Chair rivalry trophy (based on a joke from then-internet sensation Faux Pelini). There was also a “Chair-ity” component to this trophy, with each fanbase having a friendly contest to see who could
raise more money for their charity of choice in the week leading up to each game.
Nebraska’s organization of choice was TeamJack.
That friendly contest will resume this fall when Nebraska travels to Minneapolis on October 18th.
Tragically, Jack’s father, Andy Hoffman, was also diagnosed with brain cancer in 2020. A truly twisted, unfathomable coincidence. He passed away about seven months later. Andy had long been the public face of TeamJack and the central advocate for his son’s story.
It truly feels like the state of Nebraska lost a son. In these divisive times, he was perhaps the most unanimously loved figure in the entire state. 19 is way too young, but $12 million and counting raised to fight pediatric brain cancer is an incredible legacy that will endure for an immeasurable number of years and save countless lives. He lived an impactful and deeply meaningful life.
And that entire legacy started when a little boy fighting an unimaginable battle reached out to his favorite college football player and that player responded with empathy and joy. A powerful reminder that the smallest actions of kindness can ripple into unstoppable waves of human goodness.
In speaking about the life of Brook Berringer, Tom Osborne once said “Sometimes it’s not about the length of life you have, but what you do with what you’ve been given.”
If you would like, please consider donating to TeamJack.