""If Luke had a concussion or a head injury, that might be the end of his career at football, and he knows it, too," said the father, who added that he had two concussions growing up, including one from football.

"One-way Wally -- the one way was always his way, [a] hard liver, hard drinker. "That, to me, hit home. He is also the lead plaintiff in the wrongful-death lawsuit he and his mother filed in February against the NFL in federal court in Philadelphia.Eric and Mary maintain that Hilgenberg's death from repetitive head trauma, and not ALS, came because of the NFL's "substantial concealment" that many former players had shown similar symptoms.

""Isn't that neat to go to bed with?" She was alone on a beach, practicing volleyball, when former Bears center Jay Hilgenberg spotted her.“You look like you could be Dan Hampton’s daughter,” said Hilgenberg, who was shocked to find that she actually was his ex-teammate’s child.Hampton has never shied away from her father’s legacy. "Football is bad.

""She lost her husband to this game," Muetzel then added. "There's not that peer pressure of 'I want to be a football player' [for] the time being.

"Like Luke, who has hopes of playing at the University of Iowa, where his grandfather played, Austin has his own hopes of playing college football, though probably at a Division III level.
“But as she gets older, she’ll learn that music is a friend who’s always there.” Jay Walter Hilgenberg (born March 21, 1959) is a former American football player in the NFL.He played center for the Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns and the New Orleans Saints from 1981 to 1993.. But two years later, doctors in Boston, where Hilgenberg's brain was studied and still sits in storage, suggested something else: that Hilgenberg instead died from repetitive brain trauma brought on by more than 20 years of high school, college and pro football.Now, his family, which owed so much to football, is deeply conflicted by it.

"We got word on the bench that his grandpa was going to have to go," said Paul Mork, New Life's head coach. "These sweeping generalizations go way beyond the evidence presented," the doctors wrote in January 2011.McKee and her associates, agreeing that more study was needed, responded by saying that "it is important to bring all perspective to the study of motor neuron disease and not to discard alternate hypotheses even if they are discordant with long-held opinions.

13 minutes ago "Until then, implied accusations of misdiagnoses and speculation on new [subtypes] ... seem premature. There's a little more control in the household," Angie said. "In a weight room at Mahtomedi High School, where Luke and his teammates puffed their way through an early August workout, the concussion talk was casual. "Often, when Luke talked to his grandfather, it was not about football. What they've learned has made them uneasy with a sport central to their lives.

Yes, of course," said Roy Winston who, with Lonnie Warwick and Hilgenberg, were the linebackers on the Vikings' dominant teams of the early 1970s. Fittingly, like their grandfather, both are linebackers. I am very nervous there," said Mary.He ended up with his father's ring from Super Bowl IX, a 16-6 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. "But, at the same time, you can't live in a padded room. She then quickly added: "I shouldn't say it that [way] totally.Luke, motionless, looked at his mother. She sports the same No. I mean it's a battle, isn't it? [He'd ask], 'How's football going? "I told [them] it's not worth it," he said.Angie acknowledges there are risks, but she said her brother has yet to come face to face with the decisions she had to make -- Eric's boys are home schooled and still too young. Luke, too, has a notebook from his grandfather inscribed with the words, "Be a Warrior for Christ -- Both on and off the football field!
"But the study was based on the brains and spinal cords of just 12 athletes -- Hilgenberg was one of three who developed a motor neuron disease late in life.

"But the controversy McKee ignited was lasting. said Mary, who tried to, but couldn't, hold back tears as she stood in her home in July.

First up was Luke's father, Mike, a dentist who recalled that father-in-law Wally Hilgenberg could be "quite intimidating.