Jack Curtis ’26 featured by CNN and CBS News for senior football season
Curtis is majoring in physics at Carleton.
Jack Curtis ’26 was featured by CNN and CBS News after completing his senior season with Carleton Football while fighting cancer.
CNN published a subscriber-only story titled, “Jack Curtis’ impossible dream: The college quarterback who refuses to let cancer stop his senior year.”
They’d roll out around 4 or 5 a.m. and point the car south onto US Route 52.
Four Mondays.
Four one-hour rides to Rochester, Minnesota.
Three different drivers – a mom, a wide receiver and a football coach.
They each had one mission: Help Jack Curtis fulfill a dream that seemed beyond impossible.
Curtis has Stage 2 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He is also a college quarterback. Typically, the first circumstance would at least temporarily prevent the second from occurring. In fact, doctors at the renowned Mayo Clinic, where Curtis was treated, told him they knew of no college football player who competed while undergoing treatment. Curtis’ own athletic trainer, who spent 16 years in the NFL, knows his share of athletes who were either treated for cancer in the off season or took time off while they underwent treatment. He knows no one was treated while simultaneously playing.
CBS News aired the segment, “Injured quarterback finishes final college football game after cancer diagnosis,” on November 17.
CBS also aired a longer version of the story on November 29, “Carleton College quarterback battles cancer in senior season, overcomes injury in final game.”