| No. 58 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Position: | Linebacker | ||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||
| Born: | April 21, 1939 Winchester, Tennessee, U.S. | ||||||||
| Died: | July 28, 2015 (aged 76) Cheyenne, Wyoming, U.S. | ||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||
| College: | North Carolina | ||||||||
| NFL draft: | 1961 / round: 2 / pick: 15 | ||||||||
| AFL draft: | 1961 / round: 2 / pick: 12 | ||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||
| Career highlights and awards | |||||||||
| Career NFL statistics | |||||||||
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Ross Cooper "Rip" Hawkins (April 21, 1939 – July 28, 2015) was a professional American football player. He played five seasons in the National Football League with the Minnesota Vikings.
Hawkins died in 2015; at the time of his death, he had Lewy body dementia.[1][2] He was one of at least 345 NFL players to be diagnosed after death with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is caused by repeated hits to the head.[3][4]
- ^ "Original Vikings' Player Rip Hawkins Dies After Battling Dementia | KSTP TV - Minneapolis and St. Paul". kstp.com. Archived from the original on August 14, 2015.
- ^ "Obituaries".
- ^ "The driving force behind Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)". Concussion Legacy Foundation. Archived from the original on July 2, 2023. Retrieved July 2, 2023.
- ^ Ken Belson and Benjamin Mueller (June 20, 2023). "Collective Force of Head Hits, Not Just the Number of Them, Increases Odds of C.T.E. The largest study of chronic traumatic encephalopathy to date found that the cumulative force of head hits absorbed by players in their careers is the best predictor of future brain disease". The New York Times. Retrieved July 2, 2023.