Jack Best wears a University of Nebraska letter sweater with "N" and "1888" sewn on it for this portrait photograph. An older gentleman with white hair, he wears a white shirt, tie and vest under the sweater.
Jack Best was born and raised in England, where Best boxed for a time under the name Jimmie Grimes. In the late 1880s, he and his family moved to Nebraska, where he worked as a tanner. Best soon became an athletic trainer at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Before the 1922 Thanksgiving football game, Best purportedly told the team it would be the last game he would attend, as he was dying, and he wanted to see them win. The team beat Notre Dame 14-6 that day, handing Notre Dame's Knute Rockne and his Four Horsemen the first of their two defeats, both by Nebraska. Jack Best died in January 1923.
