"He didn't want to be back in the bedroom," wife Terri said. "He can see his garden from here. And his fish (mounted on the wall)."

Terri and her mother prepared his bed by the window, but Milt was doing fine in his leather recliner, well-rested after his best night of sleep in weeks. He even had dreams.

"Lot of dreams," he said, bed sheet over his legs.

A few weeks earlier, he'd woken up at home and felt like he was suffocating. He spent 72 hours on a ventilator the weekend of the Wyoming game. Meanwhile, his daughter was in the building next door, giving birth to Milt's 11th grandchild.

"He had more machines around him than I could shake a stick at," McBride said.

"Essentially," Tenopir said. "I was dead."

And then he wasn't. Sunday morning, Sept. 11, McBride returned to the hospital expecting the worst. He found Tenopir awake, hugging visitors.

"You know how they only allow maybe three people in the room?" McBride said. "I bet there were 12."

Former players ate up plenty of space. When nurses alerted Terri to another guest, she asked who it was.

"Just another big guy," the nurse said.