During his last campaign with the Vikings, he began his studies at the William Mitchell College of Law, where he graduated at the top of his class.
He eventually became a partner with a Minneapolis, Minnesota, area law firm following his NFL career.
[4] In March 2014 he received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease).
[5] Following his death Doctor Bennet Omalu conducted an autopsy on McNeil and confirmed the CTE diagnosis.
McNeill was the unnamed individual in a study published online in the journal Neurosurgery, where evidence of CTE was observed during scans while he was still alive and confirmed during an autopsy following his death.