Edward Blaine Ph.D. Interview
>> Saturday, May 17, 2008
His time as a football player included an All-American selection playing offensive guard at the University of Missouri plus an impressive NFL career capped by his 1964 All-Pro selection; but, these gridiron feats pale in comparison to what Edward Blaine, Ph.D. achieved in his post-football career. He has tirelessly worked to improve the quality of life for men and women throughout the world as one of our nation’s foremost medical and pharmaceutical researchers. He kindly agreed to speak with Football Review Daily about his collegiate memories, playing under coaching greats Vince Lombardi and Dan Devine, and the importance of maintaining a life-time exercise plan.
Q. Can you elaborate on your favorite moments from your collegiate playing career at Missouri?
Of course, there are many and it is always difficult to pick a single instance that was most important. But if I must, I would say it was our victory over Navy in the Orange Bowl in 1960 (actually New Year’s Day 1961). We had been ranked number one in the nation coming into our last game of the season against our arch rival Kansas. Kansas won that game (one of the low points of my recollections) and we lost the right to call ourselves the nation’s number one team. Joe Bellino was the Heisman Trophy winner that year and our victory over a great Navy team led by the Heisman Trophy winner went a long way to restore honor. Another great memory was our victory over Michigan in 1959, perhaps the beginning of the great Devine era at Missouri. Then, there was the pass I intercepted and ran back almost for a touchdown before I was tackled on the 2 yard line!
Q. In 1991, you were elected to the University of Missouri's Athletic Hall of Fame and you gave the and you spoke to the graduating seniors at their commencement services. Can you elaborate on these experiences?
Actually, the start of this experience which ultimately resulted in my return to MU for the final phase of my career began in 1989 when I was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Missouri. This is the highest award that a university can bestow and I was deeply honored by it. Subsequently, I was asked by then Chancellor Haskell Monroe if I would deliver the commencement address to the graduating class of 1991. That too, was a great honor and probably nothing in my life was so uplifting and gratifying as standing before that audience that day and delivering that address. I still remember the thrill to look out on all those faces and recall that just a few years earlier I had been sitting out there looking back. You have to remember, I’m a kid from a very small town in Missouri, Missouri was always the only school I ever considered attending and I was the first of my family to go to college. In fact, my brother next to me in age was the first to finish high school in our family. None of that is meant to diminish the honor of being inducted into the University of Missouri Athletic Hall of Fame. That, too, was a great honor and I’m ever so proud that I was selected among those great athletes.
Q. What are your thoughts on the Missouri football program's recent success?
Everything good. I really like Gary Pinkel and I think what he’s done to revive the MU football program is nothing short of sensational. We’ve gone through a long dry spell and all I can say Go Mizzou!
Q. After your All-American collegiate career, you were drafted by the Green Bay Packers. What do you remember most about being coached by Vince Lombardi?
Being coached by Vince Lombardi! Without a doubt the greatest coach I was associated with. Mind, I think Dan Devine was also great. I was doubly blessed to have experienced two of the really great coaches of that era. Lombardi was a man who was in control. Even when he was coaching some of the truly best players in the NFL he was the person who called the shots. If you didn’t like it you took a hike. I like that kind of leadership and I think both Lombardi and Devine demonstrated it masterfully. Somehow, I also liked his New York character suppressed in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It didn’t surprise me at all when he took the job in Washington. I just couldn’t ever figure out why they didn’t offer him the Giant’s job. When I was drafted by Green Bay in the second round, it was a great surprise to me and a lot of others. I only spent one year with the Packers, but it was one of the best years of my life and I owe that all to Lombardi. He had confidence in me and I hope I didn’t let him down.
Q. You then moved on to the Philadelphia Eagles. Were the fans as notorious then as they are now?
Yes! The Boo Birds were perched in Franklin Field and that was pretty much all we heard when we were on the field. Franklin Field was a great old venue to play in and only concentrated the sound. To tell the truth, most of us didn’t hear a lot of it because we were too immersed in the game.
Q. Can you speak about the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center?
My career in science has been as rewarding to me personally as my career in sports. They are really two very different worlds, but I can tell you there are a heck of lot more people in science who ask me about sports than there ever were people in sports who asked me about science. Very few get to experience two very satisfying careers in a single lifetime. I feel doubly blessed because of that. Football was hard to leave, but it was the right thing to do and I did it at the right time, despite what a lot of people said at the time and perhaps still feel. My father-in-law suggested I might want to seek the help of a psychiatrist to understand why I walked away just as my football career was peaking. Nevertheless, my career in science has taken me all over the world and to intellectual places I never even dreamed of. Returning to my alma mater as director of the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center culminated a long and satisfying career in science.
Our focus at Dalton is collaborative, interdisciplinary research in the cardiovascular sciences. We seek to join scientists for a variety of disciplines to bring their highly specialized knowledge to bear on important problems of cardiovascular health. We are particularly blessed at MU to have a medical school, a veterinary school, a college of engineering as well as arts and science and agriculture all on one campus. The possibilities are awesome. The new director is bringing new things to the fore and one of the most promising is a collaboration between cancer researchers and vascular biologists. A powerful combination to seek novel treatments for two of the most dreaded maladies of humankind.
Q. What has been your greatest achievement during your medical research career?
This is a much more difficult question to answer than the first one – what were the high points of my sports career. I’m very proud of all the work I’ve done to define the hormonal control of salt and water balance and the role played by the kidney in blood pressure regulation. Much of this is fundamental work that contributes to the advancement of science but may not make the headlines of the newspapers. However, during my career in the pharmaceutical industry I was associated with the development of some of the most important drugs now available for the treatment of hypertension, blockers of the renin-angiotensin system. I’m also very proud of the role my colleagues and I played in the discovery of and development as a drug of a novel hormone, atrial natriuretic peptide. Science has much less visible rewards than sports and you have to be satisfied with what you do on a personal basis and not depend on a lot of lights and signing autographs.
Q. What advice can you give to aspiring professional athletes with regards to maintaining their overall cardiovascular health?
Watch the weight. Football players particularly linemen are prone to be heavy. During their playing days there is a lot more muscle than fat, but as you age, it becomes harder and harder to keep the fat under control. Burning 5-6000 calories may be possible for an active player, but burning 2-3000 afterward is a much more difficult problem. Obesity is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease and it is an insidious problem. Life-time exercise is very important and that becomes especially relevant to those of us who have suffered joint damage and are limited in what we can do to keep active. I love to ride my bicycle and I would urge everyone, not just athletes, to keep as fit as you can as long as you can.
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