I was one of the lucky ones. And some of you, hopefully many of you were too. I got to meet Jack Hoffman, and have gotten to know the Hoffman family some.

Helluva family. Helluva kid, brave kid. Helluva brave football family. Hall of famers, all of them, for real.

Actually it was at the Nebraska Eight-Man Hall of Fame induction a couple of summers ago, when the Hoffman family was enshrined, that I got to meet Jack. Through their play and coaching Mike, Andy and Tony Hoffman got their names on the plaques but it was an event that celebrated the entire family’s contributions to the game.

And that included Jack.

Tony I had happily gotten to know well through his coaching, especially at Crofton, while Andy was an attorney who opened an office in Central City while Penni and I owned the paper there, so we bumped into each other. (In another devastating turn Andy passed away in 2021, another kind of brain cancer the culprit.) Mike I have worked with as the current football coach at Boyd County, and all the boys had their own impressive football playing credentials at Spencer and Spencer-Naper.

But they all paled in comparison to Jack’s.

It’s a story that will be told for eternity, both here and above, the day seven-year-old Jack stole the heart of Husker fans - the Huskers, too - and folks from all around the world. It was the day of The Run.

Flash forward just a bit. It was the next morning, the Sunday after the Huskers spring game, and Penni and I had been on a family outing so I hadn’t been able to watch the game, and had it taped so we didn’t listen in on the radio, either. Hence, the following morning, leafing through The World-Herald I came across the game stats with no real frame of reference. Those stats are especially fun for me each spring since that’s often when many of our Huskerland guys on the roster get their chance to shine - Ben Eisenhart, you know what I mean.

So I get to the stats and right away I have an immediate question, a serious but rhetorical one I asked Penn, who really didn’t track things like that, “who the hell is Jack Hoffman?”

I mean, seriously. The kid got one carry, went 70 yards for a touchdown and I hadn’t heard anything about this phenom on our roster. A quick second later it hit me...Jack Hoffman...oh yeah, THATJack Hoffman...

Indeed. That Jack Hoffman, adopted by the Huskers football team, both him and his cause, the young kid whose battle against brain cancer had led the formation of the Jack Foundation, which raised money and awareness for childhood brain cancer research, with the goal of increasing survival rates and reducing side effects of treatment. With Jack as the inspiration the Foundation did, and still does, just that with big-hearted Rex Burkhead, the former Husker star, as its biggest cheerleader. Outside of family, Jack’s biggest cheerleader.

But on that day back in April of 2013 Jack was just a ball player. A ball player with a job to do.

If you are reading this then you undoubtedly remember The Run, and the national sensation it became. With Greg Sharpe’s voice soaring over the video clip there he was, wearing Rex Burkhead’s No. 22 but No. 1 in our hearts, taking the handoff from QB Taylor Martinez, making some sort of great cutback move and then hitting the jets, running ever faster once he got a sniff of the end zone. That’s a Hoffman thing, you know.

At the time there were doubts, given his condition as a brain cancer patient, if Jack could even make it 70 yards all at once, but you could never have told it the way he raced down the field that day, surrounded Husker football players, loudly exhorted by the fans in the Memorial Stadium stands and in living rooms across the country. That Jack Hoffman split the middle of the end zone, turned around and was swarmed by both benches, every Husker in sight there to cheer him in this grand, most iconic moment.

Pretty sure I am not the only one crying right now.

Jack went on to beat back the cancer in his body for another dozen years, getting to play football and run track at West Holt High School, where he enjoyed being treated like just one of the kids, not the American icon that he truly had become in life. Even more so in death.

Jack died a couple of days ago, his cancer making a ravenous and heartless return, the gut punch of an announcement made on Christmas Eve, of all days. Time was running out on No. 22 but not his legacy. That is a forever thing. Jack’s fight, fulfilled with such grace, maturity and self awareness for someone so young, is the kind of blessing one can only give when he’s headed for the medal stand to receive is final reward.

As Rex said so poignantly on the digital platform X, “Love you buddy. Tell Jesus hello for us.”

I know I am not the only one crying right now.

Jack, you touched the souls of not just Husker Nation, but our entire nation, with the way you chose to life you life in the face of such a stacked deck. Stacked, maybe, but in the end you proved to be the ace in a winning hand.

Rest well, Jack, you just scored the biggest touchdown of your life.