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Former Wisconsin football player Jack Pugh, who left college football due to mental health issues, has died, the university announced Tuesday. He was 24 years old.
Pugh, a native of Ohio, was a tight end for the Badgers football team from 2021 to 2022. The cause of his death was not immediately known.
Pugh redshirted his freshman year and made his debut for Wisconsin in a game against Minnesota the following season. But in December 2023, he announced he was stepping away from the sport due to mental health issues. (Courtesy of Wisconsin Athletics)
“The Wisconsin Athletics family is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Jack Pugh. Jack was a positive light and brought true spirit to our football program. More than that, he cared about people and was loved by his teammates and staff,” the statement read.
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“Jack is proud to have graduated from UW-Madison in 2025 and will forever be remembered and loved.”
Pugh redshirted his freshman year and made his debut for Wisconsin in a game against Minnesota the following season. But in December 2023, he announced he was stepping away from the sport due to mental health issues.
Pugh redshirted his freshman year and made his debut for Wisconsin in a game against Minnesota the following season. But in December 2023, he announced he was stepping away from the sport due to mental health issues. (Courtesy of Wisconsin Athletics)
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“I made the decision before the football season to retire for medical reasons, which I have not yet officially announced. My physical health was not perfect, but my mental health is the reason I decided to call it quits,” he wrote in an Instagram post at the time.
“Through years of prolonged depression and substance abuse, I decided that I deserved a better life and was finally finding happiness. Football was by no means the root of these problems, but everything in my life had distracted me for so long to the point that I never prioritized my mental health from the start, digging a darker, deeper hole.”
Pugh redshirted his freshman year and made his debut for Wisconsin in a game against Minnesota the following season. But in December 2023, he announced he was stepping away from the sport due to mental health issues. (Courtesy of Wisconsin Athletics)
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New York Jets running back Braelon Allen, who was Pugh’s teammate during his time at Wisconsin, shared a post on X apparently in response to the news of Pugh’s death.
“Protect your mind”, his post
