This comforted those who drove toward Baldwin, from Chicago and Detroit and so many points in between. Finnerty seemed invincible. Finnerty was invincible. The first time he rode a BMX bike, he launched off jumps. The first time he tried golf, he scored the lowest round in his party. In one football game, a defender turned Finnerty’s helmet sideways, but he scrambled away and tossed the ball 50 yards down field, helmet askew, vision partly blocked. Touchdown.

Finnerty was big. Powerful. Broad. Strong. Tough. A Ford truck commercial sprung to life. John Wayne in shoulder pads. He landed in trouble his redshirt freshman season when he stalked to a campus fraternity house. According to the recollection of several people familiar with the incident, Finnerty asked seven members of the fraternity which of them had attacked a teammate. When no one responded, he promised to go after all seven, and when he started for them, two jumped off the nearest balcony. (He was disciplined for the incident.)

The Finnertys passed such toughness down through the generations. Cullen reminded siblings of his grandfather, Patrick, the toughest Finnerty of all, a former Golden Gloves champion and union leader who served in World War II. Even as Patrick Finnerty fought stomach cancer, he showed up for football games and practices and vacations. The boys called him Boom Pa. He died in 1998.

Football also connected the generations. Tim Finnerty Sr. played for Bill McCartney — who would win a national championship at the University of Colorado — in high school and became a coach in 1975. He never asked his three sons whether they wanted to play football. It was assumed. Cullen joined his first team in the third grade.

His football career became an excuse for the family to gather and travel. It was the thread that connected them. When Cullen won, they all won. Brendan and their younger sister, Courtney, followed Cullen to Grand Valley State. Brendan played defensive back for the football team. Naturally, his brother charged at him in practice.

“We could have just as well been a bowling team,” Tim Sr. said. “But it was something that brought us all together. Football did.”

When the family gathered for his daughter’s baptism, after all the Irish step dancing, Cullen dragged his brothers outside. He wanted to show off his new boat, the bench in the middle flanked by pontoons on each side. He seemed so proud of that little boat. Around midnight, he paddled around the small pond in his backyard and emerged with his rear end soaked.