VINCE LARA: Hello, this is Vince Lara at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I'll spend a few minutes with Kelsey LeFevour, paralympian and doctoral student at Illinois to talk about why she took up wheelchair racing and her experiences at DRES.

All right, so I'm here with Kelsey LeFevour, who is a 2016 paralympian and training for the 2020 games. So Kelsey, I was reading your bio. And I noticed that sports wasn't really something that had any interest to you growing up. So how did you get involved?

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: Well, so I didn't actually know that there were opportunities for people with disabilities to be involved in sport. I didn't really grow up in a town that had a lot of other young kids with disabilities. And I didn't go to school with a lot of other kids that were my age that had disabilities. And so I kind of always thought it was something that happened to older people, I guess, because that was sort of besides myself, like, everything that I had had exposure to.

And I was actually a freshman in college here in this very building that we're in right now. And I was introduced to Adam Bleakney, who commented-- and we laugh about it all the time now-- he commented that I had really long arms, which apparently is good for wheelchair racing. And he had kind of extended an offer that if I ever wanted to come and try out a racing chair that he would set one up on the rollers.

And I sort of brushed it off for a little while because I was like, well, I'm not really sporty, like, and kind of looking back on it, I kind of just thought that I couldn't be, not really that I didn't have an interest in it. And kind of as that was all going on, I was kind of navigating me just being a freshman in college. And I missed the routine of home.

And I missed kind of the close-knit group of friends that I had from high school and growing up. And kind of in just like being around the building here and kind of the other student athletes that came through the building, it also seemed like a really good way to get to know people. So it probably truly was a social thing for me, socially-driven early on because I thought that it would be a great way to sort of find a niche sort of here because it's really easy to get lost among 40,000 students.

So I was really struggling my first semester of college. And this became a great outlet for a thing that I went and did every day and then also getting to know other student athletes and people with disabilities. And it made a big difference, I think, in sort of my kind of acceptance of what it meant to be a young person with a disability. And it was a-- ended up being a great outlet. And it became something that I never would have imagined.

VINCE LARA: So you didn't know coach Bleakney before getting here. Because coach has a reputation obviously in the racing world. But so he wasn't part of the reason you chose Illinois obviously. So it must've been the academics because you weren't a sports person. You didn't even know what DRES was.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: Correct.

VINCE LARA: OK.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I grew up in Chicago. So the University of Illinois is a state school. And kind of like-- I had these big aspirations of moving out to Colorado, kind of got the mountain bug and applied to schools out there. And then it was actually from the encouragement of my mom who wanted me to apply here. And I was very--

VINCE LARA: Just so you would stay close to home? OK.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I think so I could stay close to home. It was also more affordable being that it was an in-state school versus out-of-state schools out west. And I was very against it. So we joke all the time. And she very kindly only says I told you so once. But it was her that sort of pushed it. And I came down here all but kicking and screaming, which I think contributed to that really missing back home, which I'm not really sure how like being 1,000 miles away would have made it better.

In retrospect, looking back on it, I'm like, well, that probably wasn't the most solid plan. But it kind of was by chance and not knowing the reputation that this university and campus has in advancing wheelchair athletics, and wheelchair sports, and developing wheelchair athletes. So I always say I got lucky. It's sort of this, like, stroke of luck that everything just sort of aligned. But no, it was not sports-driven.

VINCE LARA: But speaking of sports, but you started with wheelchair basketball first, correct?

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: Yeah, they started sort of side-by-side a little bit.

VINCE LARA: OK.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I think actually maybe by, like, a week or so, I had gotten in a racing chair first. But I did also start exploring wheelchair basketball, which was another great experience just in participating in a team sport. So I never really been part of a team before. And you get obviously the team aspect sort of in both basketball and racing. But the kind of having four other players sort of out on the court at the same time. And you rely on each other, I think, in a different way.

Not a lack of seeing that in racing, but just I had a jersey. I had kind of getting to know the equipment on the different-- two different sports, and then traveling with the team. And I got a locker here at DRES in the locker room. And so it was all these experiences that I had never had as a kid that a lot of kids do have, kids and teenagers and things like that.

And so a lot of those sort of nuanced things of, like, it was that I fell in love with both sports. But I also got a lot out of that other kind of secondary stuff like the jerseys, and the team gear, and traveling on a bus for 12 hours to different tournaments, and different races, and things like that, and just experiences that I didn't have growing up, which ended up being very fond memories when I look back on my undergrad experience.

VINCE LARA: Well, you talked about being part of a team. So you were on the 2016 Paralympic team.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I was, yes.

VINCE LARA: In Rio. So do you feel like that gives you an advantage competing for 2020's team?

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I think one of the cool things about particularly racing, and any sport, I'm sure, each quad is so different. And so I think that if anything, I've got the insight of that experience that makes it less unknown, I think, if that makes sense. So I remember kind of in the year leading up to Rio, it was hard to imagine what it would even be like, right? Like it's something that was just so beyond my comprehension, I think.

And so I think that there's certainly something to be said for having experienced it and kind of knowing what the process of making a team is like. I think that that certainly provides some sort of advantage, but also knowing that there's a lot of-- we've got a lot of young talent that's coming up, and seeing the sport grow. And in turn, the people participating is growing as well. And so it's certainly just as much of a grind. That's for sure.

VINCE LARA: Well, thanks for setting up my next question because I was going to ask you. So you're 30.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: That is true. I just turned 30.

VINCE LARA: You just turned--

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: It's like a big, big thing this year. I was like, oh, my gosh. [LAUGHTER]

VINCE LARA: But does that mean that you feel like you're a mentor? Because you have younger teammates. Like I just interviewed Alexa. And she's 20. So do you feel like you're in a mentor role? And what do you do in that role if you do feel that way?

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the really cool things about our team is that we are so diverse in backgrounds and past experiences. And then we also have a wide range of ages. So we've got kind of incoming freshmen who are kind of just starting out in their college experience all the way up to grad students, people that have already graduated from either undergrad or graduate school.

And so we've got this really diverse range of experience, which I think is really unique and really cool. And I think it works both ways. I think we learn from each other kind of back and forth. And so I think that there's certainly something to be said for kind of being one of the veterans or seasoned members of the team and kind of getting to share some of your experiences with our younger athletes.

And I certainly learned a lot from those that were older than me. I was so new to the sport that everything was just this, like, brand new experience. And I was really fortunate that I had some really great mentors that sort of took me under their wing a little bit and made it a little bit less overwhelming.

And I think that positive experience is certainly something that made me keep coming back. Like I think had that not been such a positive experience, the whole thing would have seemed really overwhelming. And I may not have stuck with it.

And so I remember that really fondly. And I think that that's something I certainly try to carry forward as our new athletes come through. But I learn just as much from them too, I think. And so it's a really unique and cool dynamic that we've got here. And I think that the mix of athletes and people at different stages of their sort of athletic and academic careers adds a great diversity to our program.

VINCE LARA: You talked about different stages of academic career. So you're getting your PhD.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I am.

VINCE LARA: In sport management.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: Yes.

VINCE LARA: And so one of the things you're doing is you're researching the transition of elite athletes into retirement.

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: Yes.

VINCE LARA: Does that mean that this is the end of competitive sports for you?

KELSEY LEFEVOUR: I don't know if it means that. I haven't reached a concrete decision about that yet. But I do think that as I've kind of gotten older and been around the sport for a bit, there is an end point for every athlete. And sometimes, that means, I think, an end point where you're not necessarily competing, but you stay involved in the sport.

And so I think that that experience looks different. And that transition to retirement looks different, depending on how and in what capacity you stay involved in the sport. So I will say that the-- kind of that research focus probably is I don't know if selfishly-driven is the right word. But I do know that I will kind of transition out of competing at some point.

And I think that sort of as a sport industry as a whole, we could do a better job of kind of helping manage that transition process. You've got athletes that become so immersed in their sport, and it becomes such a prominent role in their life, that the thought of not having that can be really daunting. And it can produce some really negative effects, whether you realize it or not.

And so I think that kind of as a sport industry as a whole, it's certainly something that I'd like to see managed better. And I think coming from a program like this where I was given the opportunity to advance not only athletically but academically as well, and having the environment and the space to do those two things at the same time, were really important for me.

And I think that it's provided a really nice foundation looking towards what comes next. I think that's sort of the catch phrase that I catch myself using all the time that, like, well, what does come next? And I think that, as I'm sure that a lot of the athletes here would attest to, we're set up to have a what comes next because we've developed not only athletically, but academically and professionally as well.

And I think that's a huge credit to the support of the university and kind of the campus community. And it's made a profound impact on me. And I'm eager to kind of dive in to sort of wherever I land professionally, whatever that is.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Kelsey LeFevour. This has been A Few Minutes With.

VINCE LARA: Hello. This has Vince Lara and the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I spent a few minutes with Daniel Romanchuk, 2016 Paralympian who's training at Illinois for a spot in the 2020 games in Tokyo. All right. I'm speaking with Daniel Romanchuk who is a 2020 Paralympic trainee hoping to make the team for the Tokyo games. So, Daniel, you started with the Bennett Blazers. But I want to go back a little bit before that. When did you know that sports was something you wanted to do?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Ooh. So I started with the Bennett Blazers when I was two years old. Sports has always just been a part of my life. So I'm not sure if there was ever really a moment where I was like, oh, I want to play sports. I got started in wheelchair racing with the Bennett Blazers when I was, I believe, around four years old.

VINCE LARA: Wow.

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: And, so yeah. With that program, a lot of kids just tried everything. You didn't have to really stay in anything, but you'd try it to see if you'd like it and kind of just go from there. If you liked it, of course you can stay in it. Also I think a little bit with your question, their motto is actually, tell kids they can before they're told they can't.

VINCE LARA: Wow, that's great.

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: We're athletes. And so there's never really been, to me, oh, well I can't play basketball. I can't do this. There's really never been any of that really in my life.

VINCE LARA: Which is great. You're from Maryland, which is where the Bennett Blazers are located. But how did you end up training here at Illinois? And is it a testament to Coach Bleakney that you ended up here? Had you known about Coach Bleakney before getting here?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: So I grew up in the Mount Airy, Maryland, about a half hour outside of Baltimore where the sports program was located. And then it was just over four years ago that I was training all on my own. We'd eventually gotten in contact.

We had asked the high performance director, at that time, are there any training facilities or anything that I maybe can go train at? Because I wanted to try and make the 2016 games. And so after them kind of looking around a bit, we got put in contact with Adam Bleakney. And so he had let me come out and train, at first kind of intermittently. And then we moved out here.

VINCE LARA: Wow. When you say you were training on your own, how did you even know how to train?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: I would say my mom did a lot of that. So we would just basically go out to there's a cul-de-sac that I would just do repeats on. It was a slight hill. And so I would just go out and do repeats of about 200 meters long. And then, eventually, just going out on the road.

I would just kind of push. I especially did not know any training methods. I didn't know anything about taper or any of the phases or anything of training. And so we would just kind of go out on rides at that point.

VINCE LARA: Had you watched the Paralympic Games, and is that what gave you the idea, oh, I need to do 200's or whatever training you had done on your own?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: I would say really it was kind of my mom that, at that time, was sort of guiding training. But yeah, they are one of the very few sports that I actually watched-- the Olympic and Paralympic Games. So yeah. I don't remember when I first watched it, but I do remember Beijing, and Tatyana McFadden, Josh George, and a number of other Paralympic racers, and other sports, as well.

So a number of other athletes had come through the Bennett Blazers sports program. And they had come back. Even after they're gone off to college or whatever, they would come back every once in a while to kind of just come back-- of course, say hi, and then just help the next generation along. And so that's something I like to do when I can, is to get back and help bring along the next generation.

So I wouldn't necessarily say when I first saw the games that I wanted to go. I'd probably say I just kind of known about them through other older athletes. And I've always been one to just push myself to see how far can I go? How fast can I go? And I think a lot of this just happened at such a young age. I don't really remember too much of it.

VINCE LARA: OK. Well, you spoke about Tatyana. And you spoke about giving back. So, at this point given your experience in the marathons that you've had and the 2016 games, do you feel yourself as a mentor to some of your younger teammates? Because some of them are as young as 19, let's say Alexa Halko. So what kind of role do you see yourself in now, while you're competing, but also as one of the more experienced members?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: I mean I think I've been very--

VINCE LARA: Fortunate?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Yeah, to have older athletes and mentors that have helped me get to where I am. And so I certainly want to help any athlete and help them just reach their potential.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. Now, you've competed in several world majors of the marathon circuit. And does that training help you with the Paralympic Games, or do you consider them really kind of separate?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: As far as the marathon at the games, that certainly does help. You'll see a lot of the same racers. Courses of course vary, but I would say it does help with the marathon.

VINCE LARA: You're also now training for Dubai. Is that a springboard also for 2020?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Yep, the last world championships just leading into the games. And so that does have a lot of things to do with the games. Slots can be earned for the country at the World Championships. I believe if you end up in a medal spot, you earn a spot. So it certainly is a big event going into the 2020.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. So now you've talked about potentially enrolling at Illinois, maybe 2020, 2021. What do you think comes after sport for you?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Certainly like to stay in the sport to whatever degree, as long as I can. One thing I've learned in racing and just otherwise is I don't know what God has planned for me. And so I try not to make a plan too much and to hold too tightly to it. Because I can make a plan for a marathon, and chances are it's going to fall apart somewhere along the way. So I'm not sure where I'll end up, but I'd certainly like to stay in the sport.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Daniel Romanchuk. This has been A Few Minutes With.

VINCE LARA: Hello. This is Vince Lara at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend a few minutes with Brian Siemann, two-time paralympian who's training again in Illinois for a spot in the 2020 games in Tokyo. Brian, good to talk to you.

So you're a graduate of Notre Dame High from New Jersey, the school that also produced Star Jones, famously, among others. And you started taking part in racing when Coach McLaughlin introduced you to it. Did you think that sports wasn't something you'd ever be able to do to take part in before that?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sports to me was kind of this foreign concept that, you know, I didn't really know of any opportunities that existed nor did I really see any kind of representation of athletes with disabilities competing anywhere. So it's kind of one of those things that when you're-- when you're growing up, you just sort of kind of resigned yourself to the fact if you don't see it, then it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. And you just look for other opportunities or other sort of interests that, you know, are kind of calling to you. And so when I was asked by coach McLaughlin if I wanted to come out for the racing team, it was very much a shock because sports, again, was something that I had never considered myself doing nor did I really consider myself excelling at it at all. So it was definitely a memorable day, to say the least.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, and how quickly did you come to enjoy the sports part of it? I guess-- was it racing that you got into first?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Yeah, yeah. So I got into racing. And so basically, the high school coach McLaughlin had said to me, you know, I've never coach an athlete with a disability before. And I was like, oh, cool.

Well, I've never done any sports before. And so he was like, we'll just kind of figure this out together. And so basically, my high school raised money for my first racing chair, which cost about $5,000, which is a huge-- looking back on it now is a huge-- was a huge sort of gamble that they took and kind of a leap of faith in me just to kind of have me be included on this-- on my high school track team.

And then I just started racing. I did the same workouts that all the able-bodied runners did. And so it was just-- I was just another member of the team, and I just used a racing chair instead of my legs.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, that's great. Now you know, being from the east coast, did you know about Illinois' training facilities, and was coming here about DRES and about the ability for you to continue to train?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Absolutely. But at first, it was not the case. So being from New Jersey and having no exposure to sports, I had created sort of this four year plan for myself where I was going to graduate from high school. And even when I started racing, I had said, like, OK. I'll do this through high school, like, you know.

But it was never anything that I envisioned happening much later on and, like, continuing to do now for, oh my God, nearly 16 years at this point. And so I definitely did not consider that. But as I started to train, I think around my-- like, towards the end of my sophomore and junior year, as you go to these local competitions with other athletes with disabilities, you start to-- Illinois is a term that's frequently mentioned.

And so you start to-- you know, again, I never-- I was living in New Jersey. I was by the shore, by New York City. The idea of coming out to the Midwest and cornfields was like the last thing I ever wanted to do. But I was actually-- I was recruited out here. I came up for a visit I want to say my-- like, the beginning of my senior year, I came out for a track camp that the university program runs for younger kids with disabilities.

I came out, and I did like the whole visit. I saw alma mater. And then I went-- I trained with all of the other U of I paralympians.

And as soon as I came home, I was like, this is where I want to go. Upon just, like, getting around campus, just seeing just the culture around this entire university towards disability is something that is noticeable right away even for someone who has no exposure to it. And so oddly enough, so I submitted my application. I did-- I think it was like the early decision thing or whatever.

And so around that December 1 or whenever that is, I remember I got-- I was, like, frantically checking my email. And I was really frustrated because it was-- we're east coast time. And so I had to wait until 6 o'clock and not 5:00, even though it's, you know, the same thing. but--

VINCE LARA: Right.

BRIAN SIEMANN: My didn't view it that way. And so I was, like, frantically, like, refreshing my email. And I actually accepted my offer of admission before even telling my parents that I got in.

VINCE LARA: Oh wow.

BRIAN SIEMANN: I remember just telling them, like, oh yeah, I got in and I'm going just because I knew that this was where I belonged.

VINCE LARA: Now you predated Coach Bleakney, correct?

BRIAN SIEMANN: No, he had been here for-- I want to say about four years before I started. And so he recruited me.

VINCE LARA: OK. So did you know about him, and was his reputation that wide that even in the East Coast, people knew, oh yeah, you want to go, you know, train with coach?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Oh yeah. So with Adam, it's really funny. So we kind of have this running joke where once I started to learn about the Illinois program my junior year or so, I mean, even before I came out here, you started to see-- like, I learned about the accolades of Adam Bleakney.

It was like I wanted to impress him. And so he would always come to these junior national competitions and everything. And I still remember my conversation with him.

And I always ask him now. I'm like, do you remember, like, where we met and what we talked about? And he's like, yeah, yeah, of course. And he has no idea. And so it's kind of this recurring joke between us that he remembers me when I was a kid. And now he's been stuck with me since 2008.

VINCE LARA: Now you've competed twice in the Paralympics. Do your teammates, at this point, come to you for advice? Because you know, there's a pretty nice gap between you and, let's say, Alexa or some of the younger members. And is that a role that you enjoy?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Yeah, so I think we have a really welcoming sort of environment. I remember when I was the young kid sort of what that was like to be-- you know, we're kind of really lucky here. We're surrounded by phenomenal athletes. And so I remember kind of feeling slightly intimidated but just sort of how welcome I was made to feel by the older teammates that I still am friends with to this day. And so it is something that I do take very seriously when new students come in that I try to be that open sort of person that kind of talks to them and kind of lets them kind of learn from some of the mistakes I made maybe. Or just to have someone to talk it was always kind of-- is something that I do cherish a lot.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hm. Now you got your masters here. Now you're working in DRES and student services. So do you allow yourself to think what's next beyond sport and what your next step would be?

BRIAN SIEMANN: So taking this job as an access specialist at DRES really sort of was kind of what I was thinking as what's my next step after sports. And so I'm very fortunate in the fact that working at DRES gives me the opportunity to still train and train for 2020 and also still work with students, which is what I love doing. And so that culture, really, I don't think I can do this anywhere else. And that's kind of-- this is the perfect sort of position for me. But it really did come out of this desire to sort of-- and it's a desire that's really kind of-- it's a message that's instilled by Adam because he wants us to look beyond sport as well and then to look towards like having healthy, active lifestyles through sports but also then having something set up after the fact because that's something that a lot of athletes struggle with if they don't have some sort of plan in place.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Brian Siemann. This has been "A Few Minutes With."

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spent a few minutes with Jake Zweig, Navy SEAL turned coach on the Illini football team. He talks about dealing with a traumatic brain injury. All right. So talking with Jake Zweig, former Navy SEAL who's now on the Illini football coaching staff. I'm not sure whether to call you Coach or Lieutenant to be honest.

JAKE ZWEIG: Nah, Lieutenant, no, no, no. Lieutenant, that's a long time ago, man.

VINCE LARA: All right, we'll stick with Coach.

JAKE ZWEIG: Coach.

VINCE LARA: Just stick with Coach. But it's safe to say you've had an interesting life and that's-- what-- let's talk a little bit about that. Like, what led from Navy SEAL to football?

JAKE ZWEIG: So it's really interesting, you know. Unfortunately I got out in May of 2001 and so September 11th hit, you know, September 11, obviously, 2001. And I got a phone call to kind of come back in. And I was really upset because I'd had a bunch of kind of really negative things happen to me in the SEAL teams and I wasn't real happy. But it really came back to I didn't have any mentorship.

So I decided to go to business school. I got into Michigan and I got into Dartmouth. And I decided to go to Michigan because I thought it would be better. Ended up going with one of my guys from college. So I went to business school.

So business school, I wanted to go to Wall Street. That's all I wanted to do. Went to Wall Street, hated it, it was good. I was in Charlotte, but I hated the idea that I'd have to go to New York City. I didn't want to live in the city. So I took a consulting job in DC doing kind of IT migrations slash security change management for the State Department and I hated every day. Like, every day I hated it.

So in the first six months, one of their corporate kind of ethos was you had to work towards your life goals. My life goals have been the same since college if you ask my roommates. You know, I wanted to win the national championship as a head football coach and I wanted to be the congressman of the sixth district in Washington. However, now I'm gonna be a US senator in the state that I win the national championship because it'll just be a little bit easier.

JAKE ZWEIG: So long story short, the first six months I didn't get my bonus. I didn't get a bonus and they said, if you start working on this goal of coaching we'll pay you your bonus next quarter. So I was like, oh.

I started working on it, I was trying to get in a bunch of places. And then I had a buddy that was an assistant basketball coach at the Naval Academy. And he just said, listen, Jake, you're really good at doing really hard things. He's like, figure out a way to get in.

And so my answer was just to go to every Maryland practice for 18 months. So for all of '04 season, all of '05 spring, and then all of the '05 season I was on the sidelines at practice. I paid $200 to be a gold member of their alumni club. That allowed me practice access, unlimited. And so I paid, I went, went to practice every day. And then right at the beginning of '05 they gave me a GA job. So I guess it would've been the end of '03, all of '04, and then the beginning of '05 they gave me a GA job.

So I walked away from mid-six figures and took $7,000 a year. Really haven't been happier since. You know, I mean, haven't been happier. Like, my wife will say-- like, I got an opportunity the other day to go to corporate America. She looked at me and laughed and she was like, you're not gonna be happy.

And I said, that's a lot of money. She said, yeah, we've been down that road, you know. We've been married-- I've been with her since 2002. So been together for a long time. She knows me, what drives me. So I found myself in coaching man, I haven't looked back since. It's been awesome.

VINCE LARA: That's amazing. Now, you'll be talking at the TBI event. So the reason we're talking with Jake is that he's going to be talking at the Traumatic Brain Injury event November 1 at Carle and you'll be speaking about your experiences with traumatic brain injury. Tell me a little bit about what happened.

JAKE ZWEIG: So, you know, it's interesting. You know, you play college football, you're gonna go to sleep. All right? I tell everybody that. Like, you know, I had a couple huge kinda TBI events in college. I was asleep for like, three minutes one day in practice. Not a good look, right?

And so, you know, then you go into the SEAL teams, you're exposed gunfire every day, you know, flash bangs, all of the stuff that they say now is directly related to CTE/TBI. So about three or four years ago I struggled with memory issues, I had some issues going on and I really pushed the panic button.

And now a lot more people are wanting to talk about kind of their issues and what they're dealing with and kind of the overarching stuff that's happening. And so I have no problem telling everybody my problems. So I literally went high order, like, hey, I think I got a problem. You know, I got a chance to go to the Cleveland Clinic to their Functional Medicine department through the Green Beret Foundation.

One of the buddies that was in SEAL training with me didn't make it, ended up being a Green Beret medic, and so he's the liaison between the Green Berets and the Cleveland Clinic. So he hooked me and a buddy up and we slid into the Cleveland Clinic and it was an awesome experience. I lost 70 pounds three years ago now. You know, my sleep went back to normal.

But then they kinda put me on this testosterone and it sucks because I weigh 230 now. I don't need this muscle. I'd much rather weigh 200 but I'm gonna work on getting off of that now. But it triggered me to do a bunch of kind of-- I'll call it alternative medicine stuff but none of it's alternative, right? Like, it's all well-proven. It's just we're in America and we wanna rely on drugs to fix problems.

I'll go back to the adage-- in China there's 1.4 billion people and they don't medicate hardly at all. They're all holistic healing. Let's fix your gut health, let's fix your body. That's mainly where functional medicine comes from. We call it functional medicine in America. We really could call it Chinese medicine.

So I got a bunch of herbs. You know, I'm on turmeric every day, I take a sleep pill which controls my cortisol levels so I got my cortisol levels down. I lost a bunch of weight. But then I was still having really bad problems with snoring. And so I got a sleep apnea machine, I don't know, two months ago and I've been rock solid since.

Now, so some of the other treatments I do. I got a live O2 machine that I built because it's only $200 or $300 hours to build it. Mainly you're paying for the oxygen machine. It has a stationary bike so I do six minutes of oxygen treatment every night before I go to bed.

I take "glucytamine," yeah, glutathione in a spray form and nasal in the morning and at night. I'm gonna recommend like, when I come and talk I'm gonna have a bunch of slides, and one of the things is the Concussion Repair Manual. So we listen to a lot of Ben Greenfield on kinda like, you know, alt healing stuff. And so the Concussion Repair Manual basically tells you how to repair your brain. And I'm here to tell you that my brain is crystal-clear right now.

And it's just-- it's a whole combination. We call it like-- he calls it the soup. You put a bunch of ingredients in the soup and you find out what works for you. So I came off of the oxygen machine for the last two months when I got the CPAP to see if it was truly just sleep-related.

It wasn't 100% sleep-related, like, I don't-- I'm not getting tired all day. I was in chronic sleep deprivation. But, you know, now I'm back on-- I went on the oxygen machine Monday and it's Thursday today. And I'm like, oh yeah. Like, I hit it last night, you know.

So when I come and talk I'm gonna-- I got-- I think I got 15 or 20 minutes. I'm going to burn through kind of my history real quickly and then I'm gonna get into the alt stuff that I'm talking about. Red light therapy has been absolutely incredible for me. You can buy it on Amazon for $67. Every other day you put it on your forehead or you put it on your head. I do head, 15, middle head, 15, back of the neck, 15, and you can feel a difference the next day.

And that's something that, you know, there's over 500 studies-- positive studies. They use red light in Europe, like it's free. So if you come in and you're overweight the first thing they do is give you six weeks of red light on your thyroid to kickstart your thyroid.

And it's been proven to promote healing five times faster. So if you get a muscle injury you put the red light on it. And it's 660/880, so the 880 is deep ultraviolet, penetrates up to nine inches. So if you figure, you know, from here to the bottom of your skull is roughly 10 inches. You're getting all the way to the bottom of your ears sitting on top of your head. Back of your neck, it's going all the way to the front, you know, so you're getting your whole brain.

VINCE LARA: So--

JAKE ZWEIG: Yeah, go ahead.

VINCE LARA: Oh, I was gonna say, now, the event is about veterans, right, I mean--

JAKE ZWEIG: 100%.

VINCE LARA: --like, with TBI. But they're-- TBI is a pretty common injury, including football players. So this is your-- you know, your avenue now. What does the training staff do to kind of mitigate head injuries?

JAKE ZWEIG: So over here, you know, we have the whole concussion protocol, which is awesome. You know, when I played like, I want to sleep for three minutes on a Tuesday. I played on Saturday. Now, I don't know if I had a concussion but I know I had a huge event. And you know, if you're unconscious for more than 30 minutes, you're out.

And now they have-- you know, we have the machines that test you, so your reaction time and all of that stuff, so you really can't fake whether you're doing better. You know the old adage, how many fingers am I holding up? It's always two, right? That doesn't fly anymore.

So we have a bunch of protocol over here. We're very cautious with it, as everybody is in the country right now. On top of that we're teaching a bunch of different techniques for tackling so that we're not, you know, getting our head in there. It's just a healthier time, you know, and then a much more aware time in the sport.

VINCE LARA: For sure. Now, why is an event like this important from your standpoint?

JAKE ZWEIG: You know, it's interesting. You just came in here and when you came in here I was talking to a veteran, and a veteran struggling with a bunch of different stuff, one of which is depression. And so one of the other avenues I want to talk about is like, I go to Al-Anon. Like, I go to a meeting that really helps me be grounded in my depression and my anxiety. I don't know why it works, it just does. You put it on top of that everything else I'm doing.

But here's a guy who served. And a lot of people are prideful and they're embarrassed that they're having problems. And for whatever reason in my life when I have a problem I go on broadcast, right? Like, I got no problem being like, yo! I can't read and write! I need help passing this SAT. Can someone come in here and help me, please? Right?

And I don't know whether that's my mom, kind of how she raised me, like, don't be-- don't hide your problems. We're a big hide-your-problems society in America. So you got all these vets out there that are hiding their problems and like, the suicide rate jumped to 31%. We're at 31%. It used to be 22%. Then it was 27%, now it's at 31%. Why?

Well, we've been chewing people up for the last 19 years and it's not gonna to stop. And I tell everybody, everybody handles it differently, but mainly it's his break point. What I learned at the Cleveland Clinic, there's a break point at 42. Your HGH levels and your lungs' ability to process oxygen drop below your body's ability to repair its brain every day.

And so at that threshold micro-problems start manifesting themselves. And the further you get away from 42 the more those problems become apparent. So I asked the guy that was sitting in here with us and I said, hey, how old are you? He's like, 44. I said, when did you really start having problems? He was like, three years ago.

VINCE LARA: Wow.

JAKE ZWEIG: Right? Which is right about the break point which I learned at the Cleveland Clinic. Because I asked her, why am I having problems now? Like, I was-- she's like, look, 42. I'm 47 now, right, and I started-- it was four years ago, five years ago when I started. I really noticed it probably six, seven years ago but it wasn't bad enough to be like, ah, what's going on?

So that's one of the big things that, you know, you kinda look at for the veterans. And what I want to do is I want to get out all this other stuff we're doing. Because when you go to the VA hospital they're not gonna help you. They're gonna try to prescribe you drugs, they're gonna try to prescribe you all this other stuff.

And I think something as simple as just a red light treatment, you do the red light treatment, shoot, every other day, probably half of the vets out there will feel 10 times better. And so for a $67 little light pad that has an automatic on and off switch, literally you might be able to fix all your problems.

VINCE LARA: Well, what do you want people-- what do you hope that people take away from this event?

JAKE ZWEIG: You know, it's interesting. Like, I want them, you know, we're having an event but now it's 2019. I'm gonna video, you guys are gonna video it, I'm putting all my stuff out there because of the more goodness I share with the world, the more goodness I'll get back.

And I want the vets-- like, I got a bunch of vets that I've had to hammer. I had to do an intervention in early July for a guy that we had that went off the reservation a little bit. And now, you know, doing a lot better. Get him some help, hey, man, here's some things, you know? And that's what happens, right?

Like, we all gotta be here for each other when we all have had a bunch of unique experiences which make us really different than the general population. And so because of that we could talk to each other. A lot of times we don't listen other people. You don't understand what I went through. Well, actually, I do understand. Let me help you out.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Jake Zweig. This has been "A Few Minutes With."

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I spend A Few Minutes With Ray Martin, two-time Paralympian, seven-time medalist, and 2020 trainee, who talks about why he came to Illinois, coach Adam Bleakney, and his future plans.

Ray, you were in kindergarten when you tried your first racing chair, but you didn't race competitively until your late teens. And I wonder why.

RAY MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, that's correct. And the reason, actually, is because I was doing multiple sports. So when I was growing up, I started with track and field. And I was in the program.

Now it's probably a sport club, but then it was just a bunch of volunteers. And we competed at the junior level. And every year, there's a Nationals event which is a multi-sport competition.

So I did other sports such as swimming, archery, things like that. So I actually didn't really dedicate all of my time to track and field. I had other practices to do as well.

VINCE LARA: OK. Now you're from New Jersey. Had you heard about the University of Illinois and its resources before you were even thinking about colleges?

RAY MARTIN: I was, actually. So I got a little bit serious into sports I want to say around sophomore year of high school. And my coach was familiar with the program at the U of I. He actually read the book written by Marty and kind of based his training off of that.

So he's very familiar with it, and he's actually the one who encouraged me to look into the school. And I did. And actually, it was the only college I applied to, which I don't recommend.

Looking back, it's a little silly to just apply to one college. But actually, it was the only college I applied to. And I applied for early admission, and I was just waiting to hear if I was going to go to college here or not. And personally, I got in. But again, I don't recommend just applying to one college.

VINCE LARA: Now how much of the reputation of Adam Bleakney played into your coming here, and how it-- and training here? How much of it was Coach Bleakney.

RAY MARTIN: Yeah. So it was a big part of it. So I actually hadn't met Adam until I did my visits here before coming to school here. So once you get accepted, you visit the school and just see the facilities and things like that.

So I had never actually met him, but he's such a household name in our sport that I was just imagining this-- when you don't meet someone, you hear all these great things about them. You kind of build this picture in your head. So I definitely had a very high expectation of Adam, and he certainly went to and exceeded those expectations now that I've been here for seven years.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. Now this will be your third Paralympics, if you make it, obviously. What lessons have you learned about training and competition that you are putting into place in this training period?

RAY MARTIN: Sure. So as an early undergrad-- so in freshman and sophomore year, I just wanted to focus on marathons and do as much as I can and really put as much as myself in the training as I could. And it worked great. It really conditioned me to be an athlete-- be a professional athlete-- and it worked really well. But after the second games and not coming up on the third games, I'm learning that you need a little bit of balance in your life. And I think that makes a big difference just in terms of performance.

So for example, I started a job here in town, and it's a job that I've been applying to at that point for over a year. And I was accepted and offered a position. And my training changed a lot. So I work full time, and I can't actually train with the team at our scheduled practices. So I have to train on my own.

But after getting this job that I had looked forward to getting for over a year, I went to the competition two months after starting the job and actually had my best times in all of my events for three years. So my times were in 2015, and that whole time between then, I wasn't hitting those times. And then I got this job, trained a little bit differently, and then I performed just as well. So I think that really-- that balance really makes a difference for people.

VINCE LARA: Now for you, what happens after the 2020 games? Do you feel like you're done with sports at that point? And do you still feel like you'll be involved in Paralympics, and training in some way, or as a mentor in some way?

RAY MARTIN: Yeah. So that's a question I get a lot, actually. And it's hard to say. And I feel like everybody would tell you that it's hard to say because we all have this idea of what we want to do. And if training full time and competing at a higher level is not really conducive to that, then it's easy to say, oh, I'll be done here. But then you'll have athletes who say that, and then they miss the score, or they just can't drop it. So it's hard to say.

But I do have other goals in life. And I'm planning to apply to physician assistant school next year to start school in 2021 after the games. So I will hopefully finish my schooling before the 2024 games. But at the same time, I don't know what my life is going to look like that far ahead, especially that much change. So I don't want to say I will definitely do the 2024 tryout for those games, but I also don't want to say I'm definitely done after 2020.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Ray Martin. This has been A Few Minutes With.

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spent a few minutes with John Consalvi, winner of the 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award and a graduate of the speech and hearing science department at AHS. I asked John what sparked his interest in language pathology.

JOHN CONSALVI: My father was an immigrant, and he acquired English as a second language. So I always saw-- you know, people always assume that he wasn't as great as he was because he couldn't communicate as well in English. And I always thought that was kind of fascinating.

We sometimes judge people on their language skills when it might just be that they're acquiring a new language. I also saw a lot of students that were struggling to communicate when I was in grade school. And I thought, hm, that's kind of interesting. I didn't really want to be a teacher when I thought maybe clinically, there was something that I could do to assist the students.

VINCE LARA: What made you pick Illinois?

JOHN CONSALVI: Well, my mentor, Joan Good Erickson, wrote one of the-- I think it was the first book on serving bilingual and multicultural children with disabilities. So she was here, and I came and saw the program. And I told her and other people that I was interested in becoming a bilingual speech language pathologist.

And the University of Illinois was totally welcoming and supportive of me. They loved the fact that I was doing something different, that I was thinking outside the box, I guess. And they welcomed me into the grad program.

VINCE LARA: And why Spanish?

JOHN CONSALVI: I believe that it seemed practical that the largest population in our country, second to English, was Spanish-speaking. And I did live in a suburb that was close to communities of Spanish-speaking children. And I think I identified with those children and that population. And it was a population that I think was misunderstood and needed more sophisticated and better quality services in the realm of education and speech language pathology.

VINCE LARA: Now, the company you own now, which is Sped--

JOHN CONSALVI: SPEDXchange.

VINCE LARA: SPEDXchange?

JOHN CONSALVI: Yes.

VINCE LARA: OK, so SPEDXchange-- it focuses on services to special needs students, correct?

JOHN CONSALVI: Well, SPEDXchange is a platform to help get answers on any question related to special education, speech language pathology, occupational therapy for school settings. The concept is that we have a community of people that can answer questions that have been posed to the community.

And it might be in any of a number of realms. Could be parents. It could be new clinicians looking for a therapeutic idea. It could be somebody wondering about special education law. Could be an administrator looking to figure out how to best hire clinicians for their department. So it's really a platform that special educators will use to improve services and expand their knowledge and build more of a networking relationship with their peers.

VINCE LARA: Gotcha. Now, this award-- what does it mean to you to come back and receive an award like that?

JOHN CONSALVI: Wow. I mean, it means a lot to me. I love the University of Illinois. It was a huge part of my education. My daughter is a student here. You know, it's like having a home. Like, coming back to the University of Illinois really is like having a home base.

I did a lot of challenging things, dangerous things when I left the University of Illinois. I went to work in an orphanage in Guatemala. There was still a civil war there. I spent some time in Nicaragua and El Salvador at that time working with populations, trying to make their lives better.

And that really kind of-- getting back here safe and sound and starting my career really makes this more meaningful to me because I made the decision to go and work abroad and take these challenges at the University of Illinois. And then when I left, I was kind of alone. So coming back as a professional and supported was just the best thing and means a lot to me.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to John Consalvi. This has been A Few Minutes With.

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I speak with Nick Burd, Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, to talk about his research on nutrition and exercise performance. So, Nick, what inspires your research?

NICK BURD: Yeah, sure. I'd say the inspiration comes from answering a lot of real world questions. A lot of our research is aimed at being translational in nature. Most of our work is done in vivo in humans, which obviously is a good model to be able to have translational messages.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. Now why pick Illinois? I notice you went to Ball State, right? So you were in the general region, but why pick here for where you're teaching?

NICK BURD: Well, I like corn, I like to see it, I like to eat it. No, but in all seriousness, so a lot of my research is tech specialized infrastructure. In particular, it would take this kind of R1 infrastructure, which we have here at the University of Illinois. So coming to a place that could support my research needs, but also had good colleagues in place to create a synergy with my research. And Illinois sort of checked all those boxes, so it just made a lot of sense to come here. And as you sort of alluded to, I was born in Ohio, so it's sort of home as well in terms of the Midwest.

VINCE LARA: Got you. Now your recent research on the effectiveness of potatoes as exercise fuel got great media attention, so I'm wondering, what led you to study that?

NICK BURD: Yeah, I mean, a lot of my research, I view my research team, we are truly a team. So any project we develop, I sort of develop it in collaboration with my research team. And what I mean by that, my PhD students normally. So that particular idea was sort of derived in collaboration with one of my formal students, Joe Beals. He happened to be a cyclist. Anecdotally, he used potatoes as a fueling source during exercise. Scientifically, it made a lot of sense to test that as a fueling source. I mean, keep in mind, right, sports marketing is-- sports nutrition marketing, in particular, they sort of have tuned us to think that we need these specialized sports gels, which they do work, but they can become expensive.

And just trying to find a strategy that's not too fancy, simple, accessible, cost effective, sort of underpin that sort of idea, potato just happened to be a nutrient dense carbohydrate food source. Students wanted to do it. Scientifically, it made sense, so we went for it. And then sometimes I always say some of the most, I guess the best way to-- some of these weird questions always get the most media attention, and that happened to be one of those, right? I think it's because everybody could kind of relate to it. There's a lot of runners out there. It was timed well around the marathon, some of the major marathons. So a lot of the news networks just grabbed it and ran.

VINCE LARA: You talked about in your answer here about cost effective means.

NICK BURD: Sure.

VINCE LARA: And so I've noticed some of your research really focuses on that, promoting health through diet and exercise changes in a cost effective way.

NICK BURD: Yeah, I'd say that's fair. I mean, a lot of our work is focused on whole food-based approaches, right? Again, I think we get tuned that sometimes. Certain strategies have to be specially formulated or highly specialized. But a lot of research is aimed at it doesn't have to be that fancy. And let's be honest here, a lot of my work is aimed at protein, dietary protein in particular, trying to optimize that within a diet. In terms of that, protein supplements are huge. And once again, they could become expensive.

And we need to be more focused on food first approaches, is what I say. Supplements are fine, but they should be just that, a supplement. But a lot of times, these are the front line strategy for people. But we need to stay focused on the food first approaches. Exercise is a brilliant tool to utilize to support a healthy lifestyle. I mean, it goes back to the old adage, you are what you eat and how you move, right? And that's what our research shows. It's aimed at showing that.

VINCE LARA: I know that you hope to look at aging and chronic disease and how exercise and diet can combat those conditions. Talk a little bit more about that, if you would.

NICK BURD: Yeah, I mean, I'm trained as a muscle physiologist, so a lot of times we're focused on skeletal muscle health. And we do that for a variety of reasons, not to get too reductionist, but muscle has a lot of pertinent roles in a healthy lifestyle, in particular, huge contributor to basal metabolic rate, which for most of us is the biggest contributor to total daily energy expenditure. So we want to make sure we're protecting muscle for weight maintenance essentially. And certainly, if you were under a period of energy restriction and lose some weight, you don't want to lose muscle because that's going to put you at a greater chance for weight regain.

But for metabolic health as well as for performance, we're focused on muscle. But our experiments, we study obesity, obviously a prevalent disease, especially in Western society, end stage renal disease, aging. These are all areas of emphasis for us because, once again, these are all situations where muscle health is compromised. So we need strategies to sort of help or improve or augment muscle health so hopefully we can ultimately improve overall health.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Nick Burd. This has been A Few Minutes With.

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I spend a few minutes with Neha Gothe, assistant professor in Kinesiology and Community Health at AHS, to talk about her research on the benefits of physical activity to improve health. What's the inspiration for your research? Why did you decide to do what you're doing?

NEHA GOTHE: So I am originally from Mumbai, India. And I grew up around people who always had an active lifestyle. I played a lot of sport growing up as a child. I was surrounded with friends, family kids, cousins, sisters, who also engaged in as much physical activity growing up. And my parents were very supportive of this interest in sport and athletics. I pursued psychology as my major. And the interest in exercise science and exercise psychology just grew very organically. So it wasn't something that was predetermined. It just so happened that I was passionate about exercise and sport. And having majored in psychology, I just wanted to bring those two together and try to study the field of exercise science so I ventured into this area of study.

VINCE LARA: You studied psychology where? In the states or in India?

NEHA GOTHE: This was back home, yes. So I did my undergraduate studies in psychology and I also followed that up with a master's degree in counseling psychology. And all this while I was still active. I played athletics. I played tennis for my college and my university. So I was always passionate about trying to bring sport and exercise together with psychology. And understanding how-- it was not just about improving performance in the athletic aspect, but also in terms of how being active helped you mentally and psychologically to stay healthy. And that kind of sparked the passion for me to pursue opportunities that looked at this field in or outside India.

VINCE LARA: Speaking of in or outside India. Why Illinois of all the universities and all the places?

NEHA GOTHE: Yeah. Illinois has really become a home away from home for me. This is really the place I came to for my graduate school. So following up with my master's degree, I was looking for opportunities in exercise science and exercise psychology. And I started looking up online what programs that offered, which universities offer those. Unfortunately, in India the field of exercise science or kinesiology is still very nascent. There aren't very many universities that offer a degree or a higher education in that area of study. And so I decided to look abroad and one of the first labs that showed up was in fact a lab here at the University of Illinois. This program, when I did more research, is among the top programs for kinesiology in the country. And it just made sense for me to give it a shot. And I applied and I came here for my graduate school. And I'm lucky to be back here now in the capacity of faculty. So it does really feel like a home away from home for me.

VINCE LARA: Did you know much about Illinois at all? Like the state and then the university?

NEHA GOTHE: Not really I just did as much research as I could and most of it was online or from having heard from friends or family who had visited the United States. I come from Bombay so it's kind of-- it's a big city. It's millions of people. It's kind of an equivalent to New York. And when I first came here, I was definitely taken by surprise to see this little campus town. But I really come to like it. I enjoy being in this kind of an environment. And, of course, when I miss the city life, I do make a trip to Chicago or one of the cities that are in town. But I've really come to like being in the Midwest and being among cornfields.

VINCE LARA: Pivoting to your research, so your agenda is focused on clinical trials to promote physical activity to improve health. But you look at some nontraditional modes, such as yoga. I wonder why you chose those methods?

NEHA GOTHE: Yeah, most of the people I knew growing up and even to date, and most of this is back home in India, nobody really had a membership to a gym. Most people who wanted to be active or exercise would do it by themselves. And a lot of times it was yoga because yoga is very ingrained in the Indian educational system in the form of physical education in schools. I grew up doing yoga in schools. That was part of our daily physical activity and physical education.

And so for me, it was quite a shift when I came to the United States to see that people here, in order to become active and exercise regularly, seek out specific gyms or facilities to pursue that. And oftentimes these facilities have or offer the very traditional forms of exercise. So it would be you have machines that you go and run on the treadmill. Or they have machines to lift weights. So it seems to be something that is quite different from what I grew up as a child and as an adult. And so I wanted to test the effectiveness of these unique therapies as well, which are definitely becoming more and more popular in the west. I have seen more and more classes that are offered which look at yoga or mindfulness or Tai Chi or martial arts.

And I was definitely interested in looking at these non-traditional modes because I know that there is some benefit to doing an activity that is not just moving your body but also exercising your mind. So yoga is kind of a holistic practice it's not just physical exercise but it's also mental exercise. It's your time out for the day when you are practicing you are focused on the instructor who is leading the yoga class. And so I was always intrigued by what other benefits can this type of an activity offer over and above the traditional activities such as walking, or jogging, or lifting weights. And so that is really what sparked my interest in testing these non-traditional, mind body therapies. And comparing them and contrasting them against the traditional forms like walking or spring cleaning. Of course, it's not to say that yoga is the best but what I'm really interested in is trying to test whether it is just as good as walking. If it's just as good as spring cleaning. Or perhaps it has something more to offer.

VINCE LARA: You just talked about some of the traditional methods. You are looking at those in connection with the cognitive benefits of exercise in cancer survivors. So can you talk a little bit about what you're trying to determine when you look at those?

NEHA GOTHE: Yeah, so like I said with these mind body therapies that is definitely the mind that is involved and by that it's looking at the brain and brain health and brain function. So as I was reading more about it, we know that with cognitive aging as people get older we do tend to lose some of our cognitive sharpness. We do have problems with memory, attention, problem solving, and that's just the normal course of aging. But if you look at specific populations such as cancer survivors. In addition to the pain, fatigue, emotional distress, that is accompanying the disease. And is often the common side effects and very widely studied and researched side effects that is growing attention to look at these mental deficits that often are reported by cancer survivors.

They are collectively termed as cancer related cognitive impairments. They're very understudied. We don't really know exactly what causes them. Why some patients experience them and some don't. But the statistics show that as high as 75% of cancer patients, especially the ones who receive chemotherapy, tend to report these symptoms. And they are reported during treatment and they often last long after treatment is complete.

So some of the patients who are survivors may actually be living with these symptoms for a long, long time. So I was interested in trying to bring exercise into this picture. And to test whether exercising can help introduction of these impairments that are reported. And we know that exercise can help in improving memory attention cognitive processing for aging, for older adults. So can we apply the same model for specific populations such as cancer survivors who perhaps could benefit more as they're going through the treatment and through the disease process.

VINCE LARA: Now you have another study coming up. "The Stay Fit" study is what it's called. And it starts November 20--

NEHA GOTHE: January 27th.

VINCE LARA: Oh, January 27th is when it starts. OK, so you have that. What do you plan on studying next? I mean, assuming that no research line ever closes, obviously, but what do you hope to study next?

NEHA GOTHE: Yeah I would definitely like to extend the project with cancer survivors. I've have gotten some really great feedback from our projects. We have had about 51 participants who have completed the studies so far. And for January we have another 20 to 25 participants who are in the works. A lot of them have asked for something more sustainable over time. They are willing to sign up for these research studies which are very structured. Our project is about well weeks. But they often report at the end of the project that once the study ends, they are going to go back to their normal, usual, inactive lifestyles. And they are interested in how I could help them to keep up active lifestyles. And how I could help them keep up they're physically active routine even after a structured study ends.

So I'm trying to look into projects that could perhaps look at exercise maintenance over time. And how those projects could be designed creatively so we as a research lab can offer kind of evidence based black farm to design and help the participants to a minimal degree as possible. And really empower them to make the decisions and incorporate physically active lifestyle into their day to day activities. So that is one of the projects I'm looking forward to.

Another study that is currently under review with the NIH, is looking at a long term yoga intervention for aging adults. So it's kind of looking at that aspect about cognitive aging. And it includes some MRI outcomes. So looking at some objective magnetic resonance imaging based brain volume, brain matter, outcomes. To see whether yoga as compared with aerobic exercise could perhaps have unique effects on the brain. And this is in collaboration with the Beckman Institute on campus. And I'll hear about that from the NIH sometime next month. So if that works the way it's planned, that will be one of our next projects here and the exercise psychology lab.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Neha Gothe. This has been "A Few Minutes With."

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend a few minutes with Chris Willis of NFL Films, who wrote a book about former Illini football star Red Grange and his impact on college football and the NFL.

Chris, you work for NFL Films. You wrote a book. Your book is coming out on Red Grange, and I'm wondering what-- is it the timing of the 100th anniversary and the 150th anniversary that sparked you to write this, or what was the impetus for it?

CHRIS WILLIS: Yeah, definitely, a couple years ago, I'm always looking ahead for-- you know, this is my seventh book, so I'm always looking ahead of certain projects I think I might want to write about.

VINCE LARA: Sure.

CHRIS WILLIS: And in 2016, when I saw that in 2019-- especially with being the NFL's 100th season, that's sort of like I always was fascinated with Red and the story, and him being somewhat the first superstar in the NFL. It was perfect timing, and my publisher loved the idea. And then college football's 150 sort of tied in, like, oh wow. This is going to be a great year for history, and sort of telling these type of stories and these type of players throughout the fall of 2019. So that was, yes, the impetus of doing the book.

VINCE LARA: Now what makes Red such a transcendent figure? I mean, considering when he played, it was so long ago that even, like, archival footage is hard to see. So what makes him still resonate today, do you think?

CHRIS WILLIS: Well, I think mainly because anytime you're the first in something, usually you're elevated. And also that he was such a great name at the time when he was popular. The roaring '20s with mass media, there was a lot of-- especially athletes took a life of their own. You had Jack Dempsey, and Bill Tilden, Bobby Jones, and the biggest name was Babe Ruth. And Red sort of fit in that period.

So his name resonates with fans, like, he was one of the biggest stars and for the NFL's sake, being pretty much the first superstar. You know, Jim Thorpe was past his prime when the NFL started, so Red sort of put the NFL on the map. You've got the league out there, got pro football out there.

Because when he joined the Bears and went on that famous barnstorming tour, big crowds showed up. And most of the crowds came to see him. They weren't seeing the Chicago Bears or these all-Star teams that were made just to play. They wanted to see Red play because they had heard about him and read about him throughout his career at the University of Illinois. So I think that's why he resonates still, even almost ninety years after he last played.

VINCE LARA: Right, yeah. It's pretty amazing. Do you think that where he was positioned-- meaning the Midwest-- played a lot into his popularity? And I say that because for a while everything was East Coast bias. In the '70s, certainly, if you played in New York, that was a big deal. Do you think that where he was based had a lot to do with him having this kind of countrywide appeal?

CHRIS WILLIS: I think it definitely helped his success. Because as you mentioned, even in the '20s, a lot of the best football teams-- college football teams-- and some of the pro or college teams were all on the East Coast. The Ivy League started with a lot of their famous teams, and then you had some of those other programs. So when Red was starting to dominate and you had Michigan, and you had Ohio State, and you had University of Illinois with Bob Zuppke and the University of Chicago with Stagg, people thought they were still a little bit inferior to the East Coast, some of the Ivies and some of these East Coast powers.

So when Red became popular-- and had the famous game against Michigan with the four touchdowns in 12 minutes, he actually played University of Pennsylvania his senior year, and all these coach writers were, OK, now we're going to show how good. And he dominated that game, scored three touchdowns, and they just destroyed University of Penn, too. So being this Midwest guy, now all of a sudden, oh, he is good as we thought, because he dominated on the East Coast.

So yes, I think if he was on the East Coast maybe he just stays a great player, and then maybe he falls away, but he-- overcome this Midwest, oh maybe not quite as good, and showed that he was.

VINCE LARA: I wonder, why did he pick Illinois? He probably could have had his pick of schools, right? So what was it about the University of Illinois for him?

CHRIS WILLIS: There was a couple things. Mainly, there wasn't sort of widespread recruiting at the time. Some of the schools did and some didn't, but being from Wheaton-- it was a little bit smaller town outside of Chicago-- but he did get recruited by some of the Big 10 schools. Michigan showed some interest, Northwestern, and then University of Chicago, but it was mainly that University of Illinois was the public school, so it was cheap for his dad. His dad was paying, wasn't getting a full-ride scholarship, so his dad was paying.

And also that one of his high school friends and former teammates-- George Dawson-- from Wheaton High was also on the University of Illinois playing for Bob Zuppke. So he's like, you know what? It's the closest, I've got a couple friends there, I'm going to go and play at the University of Illinois. And Zuppke was one of the great coaches-- especially the Midwest-- at that time, too.

VINCE LARA: What was the program here like before Grange got here?

CHRIS WILLIS: It was-- it took-- I mean, once Zuppke arrived, he turned it around pretty quickly. You know, they were in some doldrums there. They were not at the level of where Stagg was at University of Chicago, Fielding Yost at Michigan, Henry Williams at Minnesota were all better than the University of Illinois at the time. And then quickly, Zuppke made it his sort of thing that he wanted to compete with these guys. He wanted to beat them. And it turned around and started beating Stagg. So it turned, and then everybody who-- especially players from Chicago and from Illinois-- there's a huge, great, high school football, especially in-- they all wanted to go to Illinois, then, and maybe not go to Chicago or somewhere else.

So at the time when Red got there, the program was definitely on the rise, and it had won a few big 10 championships under his belt.

VINCE LARA: So there was no draft at that time, NFL draft. So was it a fait accompli that Red was going to end up with the Bears just because of proximity?

CHRIS WILLIS: Well, obviously, the Bears had an in with Halas, had played for Zuppke, and they were close enough. But they were also the best-run team at the time and Halas was dedicated the sport, even though it was only in its sixth season in 1926. He was dedicated to the sport. He wanted to make it his life's work. So he knew that a star like Grange could only help.

The best thing that happened for Halas was that Red was interested in playing pro football. He had other offers. I mean, even his college coach did not want him to play. They were against pro football. Even his dad didn't really want him to play pro football, in some of those newspaper articles. But Red wanted to do the thing he did best, and he could have went into politics, become a writer for newspapers, a businessman, sell real estate. He was offered a real estate job down in Florida. Like, he wasn't qualified. He goes, look. I'm pretty good at football. I like football. It's my name, and he knew he was only have a short shelf life.

So that helped Halas. Red wanted to play pro football. Halas had the team already there, and they didn't have to start a new team or hire players or pay players. So it was a perfect fit at the perfect time, and is mainly based that Red really wanted to keep playing at 22 years old. He didn't want to quit.

VINCE LARA: Short shelf life in terms of what he envisioned his life as? OK.

CHRIS WILLIS: No, a short shelf life in playing football. He knew he wanted to keep playing after 22, but he knew it was only going to be a couple more years, and then when he turns 25, 26, he's got to go do something else. So he wanted to take advantage of, oh, I have a name. People want to pay to see me play. I can make some money, and I'm still at my peak as an athlete. Let me keep-- he didn't think he was going to-- nowadays, guys think, oh, I can play for 10 years, maybe. And Brady wants to play till he's 45. I mean, that's ridiculous. But back then, he thought, I only have two or three years. Let me take advantage of that, and then I can go do my life's work.

VINCE LARA: Wow, that's interesting, because he figured that the punishment he would take on the field, or it was just like I don't want to do this forever?

CHRIS WILLIS: I think it was more of, yes. You only had a short shelf life maybe with your health.

VINCE LARA: OK.

CHRIS WILLIS: And also the fact that the next new star might come three or four years later, the next player, then people lose interest in me. And let me take advantage of it now, because people want to pay to see me play.

VINCE LARA: You know what's interesting is too, at the same time, there was another transcendent star in baseball-- Babe Ruth. So was it a chicken or egg thing with Red in that does Babe happen without Red, or does Red happen without Babe?

CHRIS WILLIS: I think more Babe being there first helped Red. Red was not going to-- obviously, because baseball was the number one sport in the country. So I think because of some of those other, like I sad, roaring '20s stars, help it. Because the World War I was over. People had some money. You know, they spent it on sports tickets. So they were willing to go see boxing, golf, tennis, even horse racing. Obviously, pro football was at the bottom of the realm. I mean, college football was up there on Saturdays, but pro football wasn't.

So I think Babe helped him, because Babe was larger than life. He had kind of a manager which was not common like it is now. You know, he had Christy Walsh helping him. So when Red's manager came along, it helped him. So I think Babe doing it and kind of setting the standard a little bit helped Red along the way.

VINCE LARA: Is it-- could it be said that it's overstated in any way that the NFL would not have survived without Red, or at least started to thrive without Red?

CHRIS WILLIS: I wouldn't say they would not have survived. The sport was going to continue. I just don't think-- Red just helped it get to the masses more. I think that was one of his big accomplishments. It wasn't that he helped save pro football. Football was going to survive. Now, it might have took even longer to get more popular, but I think he just helped the masses.

And like we talked about a little bit earlier, across the country, like, when he went out to Los Angeles and San Diego and played in Portland. He played in Florida, they became a little bit more-- although they didn't the NFL teams, they became more familiar with what pro football's about, and what type of athletes was coming into the game. Because if Red was going to play pro football, then oh, it must be somewhat good, because he's the best player coming out of college football and the best player-- some might say he might have be the best player in football at the time, you know, ever.

So I think that helped with the masses more than-- because it took, still, the '30s and '40s, even up till TV to really take off. So it would have survived, but it might have took a lot longer to say, hey, what is pro football about, and who are the athletes playing in pro football?

VINCE LARA: Is there an analog today to Red, and I say that meaning, is there a guy who-- in recent years-- came in, had a huge impact, but then said I want to do something else?

CHRIS WILLIS: Well, I don't know, because the sport-- pretty much, you know, since the Super Bowl era, so we're talking about the last 45 years-- has been number one, so it's more of the athletes are getting better and he just-- I mean Patrick Mahomes just looks like a freak now, more than even Joe Montana and Joe Montana was before Unitas or something like that. I think Red's main legacy or part of that is, he made the blueprint for what the NFL athlete is today, and he did it in 1925. He did it almost 100 years ago.

VINCE LARA: Right.

CHRIS WILLIS: You know, he left school early. I mean, he played his last game, but he left school early. He signed with an agent, he signed the highest rookie contract in football. He did endorsements. He did Hollywood movies. You know, he won NFL championships. So that's what we strive today. You look at Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, you know, Aaron Rodgers.

VINCE LARA: Even Jim Brown if you want to go back to that.

CHRIS WILLIS: No, he's sort of set that standard in 1925.

VINCE LARA: Right.

CHRIS WILLIS: You know, so I look at that and I'm like, wow. And he was smart enough to see that. You know, he's like, you know what? Football is going to be good. I can do these things. It allows me to where-- now, like I said, Patrick Mahomes can do any of that. If he wants to do a movie spot or he wants to do a TV spot or do endorsements-- which he does-- and then also be a great player, you can do that and strive to be that.

So I think that's where Red's blueprint-- like I say, he did it 100 years ago, pretty much.

VINCE LARA: So a guy like Red couldn't exist today, do you think? Or it would just be a different--

CHRIS WILLIS: No, Red would be one those guys. You know, if Red was a great athlete, like, he was the fastest player on the field. He learned-- and some of the things that I did research in the book is, he would learn how to throw the ball during summer vacations. He would learn how to do stiff arms. He learned how to try to punt, or kick a little bit. He did this at 18 or 17, 18, 19, 20 years old. He worked on his craft.

And some of these articles that were from the mid-'20s, and he's talking about developing his legs and his stamina and being ahead of the game. I mean, he became the nice man to actually help him be a football player. The money was nice during the summer, but he talked about that even at a young age. He wasn't-- I did find in his autobiography, and certainly he talked about it. But he actually talked about it even much earlier in high school and college, talking about these type of things. I'm like, wow. Most of those 18, 19, 21-year-olds were not even thinking of that. They're just goin' playing football because they liked playing football.

So I think he would be one of those super freaks where he'd want-- maybe a Christian McCaffrey, where he's just a great all-around player, and he just loves, and he drinks and eats and sleeps football 24 hours a day.

VINCE LARA: Was there much pushback against him? And this is a time where newspaper columnists really had a lot of weight, right?

CHRIS WILLIS: Absolutely.

VINCE LARA: So was there a lot of pushback against him for trying to go to the NFL and--

CHRIS WILLIS: Absolutely. I mean, first was, like I said, his dad. His dad allowed him to make the decision, but he was not pro going-- wasn't in favor of him playing pro football. He'd rather see him stay in school. I think was more of because he dropped out of school to go into into-- and his dad didn't really-- and all the college coaches were against, cause they thought the pro game was evil and a menace, and they were-- yes, they did take players and they would use it, assume names and play on Sundays and they would get caught.

But-- and when once the NFL got more established and the rules were a little better, that was going to go away and stuff. So all the college coach-- and there were some writers that said, yes. Stay away. You'll be better for it, and there were some writers that were pro. Look, he's old enough to make his own decision. He wants to go play, and Red always said-- especially at the time, Babe Ruth gets paid. Christy Mathewson, like nobody complains about these college guys.

VINCE LARA: Sure.

CHRIS WILLIS: Well they moved, but Christy Mathewson and Eddie Collins played in college and then went on to play major league baseball, and nobody complained. Nobody really gave them the business of turning it away and going to play pro ball. So he did get it from all over, and there was some pushback of joining the NFL.

VINCE LARA: What do you think he would think of pro football today?

CHRIS WILLIS: I think he would love it. Red lived a full life. He was 87 years old when he passed away in January of '91, so he had seen it become the number one sport, Super Bowl. I think he would, because he just loved the game. You know, he would watch college. He would watch the NFL. So I think he would just continue to love it and see how great it is and stuff. So yeah, he would love it.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Chris Willis. This has been "A Few Minutes With."

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend a few minutes with former Sports Illustrated writer Lars Anderson who wrote a book about former Illini football star, Red Grange and his impact on college football and the NFL.

Now, you know Red played a long time ago and-- and even finding archival footage of him is difficult, yet he still resonates to this day and I'm wondering why you think that's the case.

LARS ANDERSON: Well, you know, the book that I wrote called The First Star, which was published back in 2009, the reason I wanted to do it was one, he was such an amazing college player in 1924 and '25 especially. And there is so much mythology wrapped around him being lugging ice around and coming just from of small town America. Losing his mom when he was five years old, who went through a lot of personal struggles. And-- and then the fact that he turned pro just right after his first college game with and his-- first college player to have an agent, C.C. Pyle and the deal that Pyle cut with George Halas. And then that barnstorming tour that they went on, I think he played his first game on the tour five days after his final college game and just going across the country.

And you know he was such a mythic figure at the time because people couldn't see him play. How people knew about him was in movie houses, movie theaters. Before the main show would play they would often show highlights of football games and Red just captured the imagination, especially after the 1924 Michigan game when he scored six touchdowns. And he-- people just wanted to see him play.

And he was so popular that George Halas and there were even other owners in fledgling NFL, who really wanted him on their team. And so Pyle and Halas arranged this barnstorming tour. And the sort of thesis of my book and I think it's accurate, that it was that tour which launched the NFL and save the NFL. The marquee game of that tour took place in New York City, the Polo Grounds, and the owner of the Giants was, I think last name was Mara, and it's still in the family. The Mara family still owns the Giants.

After-- when he looked out, this was before the game, when he looked out at the sea of people who were there he said, my financial worries are over. And even Babe Ruth was in attendance and Babe Ruth was upset because he saw about 50 photographers following Grange around on the field during pregame warm ups and Ruth said something to the effect of, that bum is stealing my photographers.

And I think it was the night before the game, Ruth went and visited Grange at the Astoria Hotel there in New York and the two of them talked up in Grange's suite and just-- and Ruth said, look. Don't read what people write about you, and don't start picking up checks. [LAUGHS]

And so I knew that there was just lot of rich characters but it was hard for me to kind of penetrate Red Grange. Because at least publicly, he didn't really open up. He was reticent and introspective by nature and because he had obviously, obviously already passed away by the time I did the book, I couldn't interview him. And so just from a literary perspective, he was kind of a flat character just because, again, he had gone through so much but he never talked about it with other reporters. And so that made it a challenge to bring Red to life away from football.

So I kind of just let his exploits on the field talk for themselves and then also just the fact on that on this barnstorming tour, there was record crowds everywhere they went. And it gave the NFL a sense of legitimacy, because you have to remember, back in 1925 the NFL was considered seedy and untoward and, you know, it was like the equivalent of how we view sort of roller hockey today. And it was Red who gave the NFL legitimacy and credibility and without him, again, you can make the argument that the NFL may not exist today.

But that tour I think it was 19 games in 31 days, and this is just off the top of my head, that tour ravaged him physically. And he was never the same player again after that tour. And so, you know, and just, there were so many different things. Like, you know, he met President Calvin Coolidge who didn't know the difference between a football and a baseball. And he was introduced to the president saying he plays for-- Mr. president this is Red Grange, he's a Chicago Bear. And the president said, well I always loved animal acts.

President didn't know who he was so there's a lot of fun anecdotes in the book.

VINCE LARA: You know, curious, there are a lot of things obviously to unpack from that, but I'm curious about the timing of when you wrote it. You said you wrote a decade ago. So books are coming out about Red now because it's the 100th anniversary of the NFL and 150th college football. Why did you write it when you wrote it? What was the impetus for it?

LARS ANDERSON: I was just coming off-- I had just written a book on it's called Carlyle versus Army, which subsequently is being made into a movie right now with Angelina Jolie backing it. But in that book-- that book takes place in 1912. And so I was interested in doing another historical nonfiction book. So I was looking for a sports figure who hadn't been written about extensively from the 1920s who was, you know, sort of this mythological kind of figure and there hadn't been a serious book done on Grange.

And again, I kind of found out halfway through one of the reasons why was because there just wasn't a ton of material on him and-- and he just was, again, not prone to opening up about himself to the writers of the day. And but, but yeah, just the timing of it was I just wanted to write something about in the 1920s. And you know, everybody knows about Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey and the racehorse Man o' War, but not many people knew about Red Grange and his back story.

VINCE LARA: So you mentioned you referenced Babe Ruth, does that Red Grange exist without Babe Ruth? Would there have been a Red Grange, would that have been even possible had Babe not sort of been a trailblazer for that?

LARS ANDERSON: That's a good question. You know, Babe Ruth was a sort of larger than life figure and you got to put sort of Ruth and the times in context. It's post World War I, people are going to sporting events in droves, and I think one reason why Grange resonated was because there was not a star athlete from middle America. There wasn't a star athlete from the middle and lower classes. And so once Grange came onto the scene it was just like he's one of our own. He's one of our own, I can identify with him, I can't identify with Babe Ruth and the lavish lifestyle and living in New York City and-- or a Jack Dempsey who's so big and brawny and just knocking guys out left and right.

So, you know, Ruth was arguably like the first sort of major sports celebrity and yeah, he may have opened the door for the possibility of somebody like Red Grange.

VINCE LARA: Now why did-- it wasn't a Fait accompli that Red would go to Illinois. Why did he pick here? I mean I'm sure it wasn't recruiting like it is today. But there were people who were interested, coaches who were interested, so why here?

LARS ANDERSON: Well, you know, Coach Zuppke here, at the time, recruiting was so different. He just almost thought it was beneath him to have to go and talk to kids from Illinois to get them to come here. And Red at first had no interest in going to college. You know, he just wanted to stay in Wheaton and keep working and supporting his family. And Zuppke arranged sort of surreptitiously a meeting with Red at a track meet.

And I think Red won the 100 and finished second in the 200 and Zuppke and said, hey. You know, they went for a walk, and the track meet was here on campus. They went for a walk around campus and he basically said, if you come here, you know, you'll get a scholarship. And that had never really dawned on Red that that was even possible and then once he went back home and told his dad, who is a no nonsense man, you know, a former logger, a very tough man, who was the only patrolman in Wheaton who worked really long hours. And so because Red's mom died when he was five, you know, she had she bled to death after having a tooth pulled which is just, it's amazing that something like that could happen but Lyle, Red's mom-- or Red's dad couldn't get her to the hospital in time to stem the bleeding.

But Red spent a lot of time at home almost becoming the man of the house because his dad was working 18 hour shifts. And-- and so-- and no Grange man or no one in the Grange family had ever gone to college. And so when Red told his dad that he'd been offered a scholarship to go to college, his dad said, you're going. And that was the end of the story right there.

VINCE LARA: Had Red played football or showed interest in football prior to this?

LARS ANDERSON: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yes. He started playing, you know, in junior high. He played against older kids. And, you know, I discuss this in the book, football became his escape from the difficulties of his own life. And in a way, he would undergo almost a personality transformation on the field. He could be really rough, he could be violent, he could even get in fights. And away from the field you know he'd be like the nicest, most passive person in the world but football became an outlet, an escape, and he did very well in high school but he also considered himself just, you know, just this small town kid from Wheaton.

And when he got to Illinois, he had no intention of playing football. He wanted to play-- he wanted to play maybe basketball and run track. He gets to his fraternity that he had joined, one of his friends from Wheaton was in that fraternity, and they knew about his exploits and so they said, OK, you're going, you're gone out to tryouts.

And Red gets over there and he sees how big everybody is, Red only weighed about 160 pounds at the time, and he sees all these guys who look like they could lift Model T's and immediately, as he was waiting in line to get his gear and his uniform, he turned around and went back to the fraternity house and said, told his older fraternity brothers, I'm not playing. And they said, well, yes you are and he said, no I'm not, and they said, OK, we're going to get the paddle. And as he was about ready to bend over and get paddled, he said, you know what? Playing football sounds like a pretty good idea?

And so he then goes, he goes back the next day and then as a freshman, the freshman basically were getting the varsity team ready for their first game. And it was just nothing more than a scrimmage where the varsity was going to beat up on the freshman. And he fielded a punt and he ended up breaking, like, five tackles and just-- and Zuppke was watching this, and he was just like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

One, he was he was fast, he was powerful, he was shifty, I mean, he was just a beautiful player and so he automatically was made what was called a, quote, made player and that he would be on the freshman team that year ends and Zuppke just couldn't wait to get him up to-- get him to be when he would be eligible to play his sophomore year. And Zuppke actually spent almost as much time with Grange as a freshman as he did with the varsity team because he knew the kind of player that he was about to get.

VINCE LARA: Now, was it a Fait accompli that Grange would play for the Bears, considering the proximity where he and the Halas connection?

LARS ANDERSON: No, it was not. This was all done by CC Pyle, cash and carry-- cash and carry Pyle. The Giants were interested in him, other teams were interested in him, but ultimately Halas cut the sweetest deal. And if I remember correctly, it was $100,000 for Grange and for Grange and Pyle, and then they would also get a certain percentage of the gate. And so almost overnight this kid who grew up very poor, struggling, he had money and he liked that a lot, you know.

VINCE LARA: What would that equate to in 2019 dollars?

LARS ANDERSON: I mean, a couple million, I would think, yeah. So you know, he immediately was the richest NFL player in the league. There'd been no contract ever like that before but Halas knew that he had to have them, especially because he was a local kid and there was so much not just local interest in him but national interest.

VINCE LARA: Now he went in with the idea that he was only going to play a few years, correct?

LARS ANDERSON: That I don't recall, but it was, it really-- that tour wore him down. He ended up getting injured and was never the same player. You know, he stuck around for a few more years but didn't do anything spectacular like he did at the early parts of the tour. And also especially like in 1924 and '25 in-- at Illinois.

VINCE LARA: Now you said early on in the interview that the NFL would not have survived without him.

LARS ANDERSON: I don't think so. I don't think so, I mean that's-- that's my opinion.

VINCE LARA: Survive.

LARS ANDERSON: Survive, yes, because of the perception of the league at the time and you had teams just folding left and right and it just wasn't a profitable venture. I mean all of the guys on the team, on the different teams, they were making such a little money that they all had, you know, regular 9 to 5 jobs. Sometimes they'd show up to games, sometimes they wouldn't, sometimes they showed practice, usually they wouldn't. It was just a very sort of haphazard not well organized organization and everything changed when Grange, again, just captivated the nation during that 19 game barnstorming tour across the country.

VINCE LARA: What made him so transcendent? Was it that he was from the Midwest, was it, as you mentioned, kind of a hardscrabble life? Is that what really?

LARS ANDERSON: I think it was just, again, I go back to the clips that people saw of him in the movie houses and it was just the highlights that he could put forth and the runs and, you know, the eight summers he spent hauling ice, that made his-- that made his forearm a lethal weapon. Both his left arm and his right arm, and he could hit guys and they would just dropped to the ground as if they were knocked out by a Jack Dempsey.

And so, and he had amazing speed, agility, able to change direction. I mean, you just-- no one had seen a player of that caliber before. And also in the movie houses, you know, because of the-- it's in black and white and because it's like a herky jerky motion, it almost made him seem faster than he really was. And so people were like, I want to see this guy, I want to see this guy, I want to see what he can do. And you know that's how people got their information.

And it was and at that time, according to my research, about 3/4 of the country frequently went to movie houses. You know, not just to see the movie but also to get their news and their sports and these mini reels that would run before the main feature.

VINCE LARA: Sure, now is there a modern day analog for a player like that?

LARS ANDERSON: Who have you heard?

VINCE LARA: So I-- Pat Mahomes is a player that someone mentioned previously. So I'm just try to get an idea but a player who had that kind of transcendent, like, when he stepped on the field, everyone stopped and--

LARS ANDERSON: I mean maybe, like, before everything, maybe OJ Simpson.

VINCE LARA: Jim Brown.

LARS ANDERSON: Maybe Bo Jackson, Jim Brown. You know, Red wasn't as big as either Bo Jackson or Jim Brown, but I would say, you know, OJ Simpson really comes to mind the way that he played and the way that he also just sort of-- when he started with the Bills, you know, it was like must see-- he was a must see player. People would go out of their way and travel great distances to see OJ play.

VINCE LARA: You mentioned how slight he was, 160 pounds. That would put him in Ice Cube territory these days, right?

LARS ANDERSON: Right.

VINCE LARA: Gerald McNeil, Gerald was 157 pounds.

LARS ANDERSON: Yeah.

VINCE LARA: Played for the Browns.

LARS ANDERSON: I think by then by the time he was a-- by the time he was a junior and senior, he was up to about 180 pounds. So he's about 5'9", 170- 175, I think.

VINCE LARA: So where would Red fit in today's game and would he enjoy today's game? He died 1990-- he died in '91, I know.

LARS ANDERSON: OK. So you know, he would be an outside player, right? He wouldn't be a running back, he would be like a Tyreek Hill type of player, right. Like he would be-- he would be a wide receiver, and a very gifted one and one that you'd want to get the ball to in space and make people miss and that to me, that's how he would fit in.

You know, the game has evolved so much and player conditioning, player size, so it's hard to think of how he would fit today. But you know, if he had started doing like real rigorous conditioning, I mean, now you have kids who have their personal coach-- personal coaches at age 10. If Red had all of that, you know, there's no telling. But I think he would be a perimeter player either a wide receiver or a slot wide receiver.

VINCE LARA: What do you-- he saw the game, he saw the Super Bowls and everything, do you think that he enjoyed what football became?

LARS ANDERSON: That's a tough question to answer because I really, in the book just with the end of the tour, you know, I think he was involved with the game to a degree after he retired. The game has evolved so much since he was playing and running you know, the single wing and all that. But yeah, I think so, I mean, again, football gave him so much.

You know he appeared in movies and his teammates started calling him Rudy after Rudolph Valentino. And you know, it's hard for me to imagine him being dynamic on screen but you know, he was he was a classically handsome guy. And also I think what also contributed to everything was the nickname, the Galloping Ghost. And it was so appropriate in on so many levels and people just wanted, again, they wanted to see it with their own eyes.

It's like I'm reminded just in my own experience of when Mike Tyson was at his prime and I was living in New York and I was able to see Tyson fight a couple times and there was just nothing like it. There was nothing like-- and it just didn't translate well on television the sense that you got when Mike Tyson is walking into the ring and the anticipation of the crowd, the roar of the crowd and the other poor guy that he's about ready to fight is already in the ring looking at Tyson coming at him and you know that this guy is about ready to get destroyed. You know, I think Red Grange had a sort of similar effect on people.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Lars Anderson, this has been A Few Minutes With.