Jack Hoffman (September 26, 2005 – January 15, 2025) was an American high school football player and pediatric brain cancer patient.

He subsequently met with President Barack Obama, received the Best Moment ESPY Award for 2013, and the United States Senate approved a motion recognizing his role in raising awareness of pediatric brain cancer.

The Team Jack Foundation was formed by his parents, Andy and Bri Hoffman, to raise money for pediatric brain research.

[1][2][4] Andy, who briefly played football at Utah State before suffering a knee injury, had been a lawyer until selling his practice shortly after being diagnosed in 2020 with a brain tumor that ultimately claimed his life, and Bri is a pharmacist.

[10][11][3] During the time between Hoffman's first and second surgeries, his father called Keith Zimmer who was the associate director of Life Skills at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Athletic Department.

As the play began, Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez initially guided Hoffman in the right direction and then he ran 69 yards (63 m) for a touchdown.

[2] Team Jack sold 30,000 T-shirts and collected $275,000 in donations, which they gave to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Hoffman family subsequently established the Team Jack Foundation,[11] which as of December 2020 has raised roughly $8 million for pediatric brain cancer research.

[3] On April 29, 2013, the Hoffman family and Rex Burkhead met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office for 15 minutes.

The resolution also singles out Hoffman's touchdown run for increasing awareness of pediatric brain cancer: Whereas on April 6, 2013, 7-year-old pediatric brain cancer patient Jack Hoffman joined the lineup of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers football team for its spring football game, wearing football pads and a number 22 jersey, and ran 69 yards to score a touchdown in front of more than 60,000 fans at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, touching the hearts of millions of Americans and raising awareness of pediatric brain cancer.

[24][25][26] After consultation with Hoffman's medical team, in mid-August 2014, his parents decided to pursue a clinical trial in Boston involving a genetic therapy approach, in part because the cancer had spread to his brain stem, making surgery difficult.

[29] The Hoffman family faced another cancer crisis in July 2020, shortly before Jack was set to begin playing football at West Holt High School.

Andy began to experience major personality changes, and on July 19, suffered a seizure that led him to check into West Holt Memorial Hospital, the small facility where Jack had been born.

A CT scan found a large mass in his brain, and further tests at a larger hospital three hours away in Sioux Falls, South Dakota led to a diagnosis of glioblastoma.

Andy continued to undergo treatment, but the Mayo Clinic's head of radiation oncology told ESPN's Elizabeth Merrill that the cancer was terminal.

In December 2024, it was said that Hoffman's latest scans that fall had found new tumor locations in his ventricular system, cerebellum, and spinal column.