Former Kansas University football player Emery Lee Hicks, a linebacker on the Jayhawks’ 1968 Orange Bowl team, died Thursday at the age of 57.

Hicks, who was born in Bartlesville, Okla., and was raised in Nowata, Okla., was an all-Big Eight Conference linebacker in 1967 and ’69. He played five years in the Canadian Football League and the World Football League. After a career in the Oklahoma oil fields and raising his family in Nowata, Hicks returned to Lawrence.

Read obit here.