Todd McCall | Forty Docs and a Playbook

A torn labrum closed one door for Todd McCall — and opened another that would shape the lives of thousands of athletes.

In this episode, we sit down with Todd, now Head Athletic Trainer at Southern Miss, to trace his journey from small-town Alabama catcher to Division I leader. Along the way: powerhouse programs in Alabama, Marshall’s resilient football culture, the altitude extremes of Wyoming, and the quiet, relentless work that keeps college sports alive long after the stadium lights dim.

You’ll hear sideline stories from the Gene Stallings era,  including a legendary exchange with a referee, but the moments that linger aren’t about scoreboards. They’re about Friday night hospital visits with John Mark Stallings. The birth of RISE schools for children with disabilities. The way teams learn to carry more than a playbook.

We unpack how sports medicine has evolved, from modern labral repairs to the normalization of Tommy John elbow surgery, and why prevention starts long before a scholarship offer. Youth pitch counts. Movement quality. Recovery discipline. Ownership.

Todd also pulls back the curtain on what a head athletic trainer really does: coordinating care with more than forty physicians, overseeing pre-participation screenings, building rehab plans athletes actually believe in, and navigating the constant tide of internet diagnoses with patience and clarity.

His philosophy is simple — and demanding:
 Athletes own the work.
 Trainers build the path.
 Trust makes the difference.

If you’ve ever wondered what truly happens between injury and return to play, this conversation takes you inside the room where doubt becomes discipline and small wins stack into comeback seasons.

Subscribe, share with a friend who loves radio, and leave a review to help more listeners find these stories. Your voice keeps this community strong.

Links to Stephen's incredible novels:

The Death Letter
The Bondage of Innocents

Transcript

Welcome To Cold Springs

Stephen Beam 0:04

Welcome to Stories from Cold Springs, the show about creativity, curiosity, and the remarkable real life characters behind the stories we tell. I'm Jay Stephen Beam, author, former physician, and educator. I'll be your guide through the winding roads of this fictional Mississippi town. Each episode, we'll sit down with storytellers, artists, and everyday eccentrics to explore the heart, humor, and humanity behind their fascinating journeys. So settle in. Cold Springs always has another story to tell. My guest today is a longtime friend, sometimes almost like a son. We worked together for in the athletic department at our local university at Southern Miss for many years. He has some stories to tell. So Todd, thank you for coming by.

Todd McCall 1:08

It's my pleasure.

Small-Town Roots And School Days

Stephen Beam 1:10

Todd McCall, tell us a little bit about your young life, where you were born and how you were raised, that sort of thing.

Todd McCall 1:18

Well, to begin with, I was born in Enterprise, Alabama. At the time, my dad, when he was in the industrial business, we lived in Louverne, Alabama for my first two years, a little small town in southeast Alabama. And then we probably moved to a smaller town called Elba, Alabama, which is around uh Dauphin in the southeast corner of the state. That's where I pretty much, you know, was born and raised, I guess. I went to school in Elba at the Elba Elementary, Elba Middle, and Elba High Schools. I played sports at Elba High School, and then once I got moving forward with my college career, it all started at Lurley and B. Wallace State Junior College in Andalusia, down in southeast Alabama, too. What sports did you play in high school? I played basketball, baseball, and football in high school. Didn't start football until I was in the seventh grade. I picked that up and I really enjoyed that, but I enjoyed all sports. I think that baseball was probably my favorite of all. I was a catcher on the high school baseball team and my summer leagues, but uh I enjoyed them all. I just always enjoyed being in the outdoors. Did you enjoy school other than sports or if you were to ask my mother, probably not as much as I needed to. Uh you know, I enjoyed uh a lot of things about school. Um, you know, I think when you're young, you enjoy the social aspect of school probably as much as you do anything else. As my mom always says, the further I went in school, the better my grades got, believe it or not. They didn't get worse, but they got better. But yeah, I enjoyed school. I was always I think that my interests were more so in the sciences than the maths. Um but, you know, yeah, I enjoyed school. I enjoyed where I came from. Um being from a small town and now dealing with athletes um from the university setting that come from these much bigger high schools, dealing, you know, being from a small town, I think that, you know, that kind of shaped me to who I am. And uh, you know, it at the end of the day, I think that also gave me a greater appreciation for things that I've got now that, you know, I may not have had otherwise. Aaron Powell So how many were in your graduating class? If I remember correctly, I was one of 72.

High School Sports And Early Injury

Stephen Beam 3:23

One of seventy-two? Man, that was smaller than mine. I didn't think mine was that large. Mine was 124, I believe. You finished high school, enjoyed it, it sounds like, played a lot of sports and went to a junior college. Did you play sports there?

Todd McCall 3:39

I was uh on the baseball team at Lurlen B. Wallace State Junior College two years. Unfortunately, my senior year I'd sustained a shoulder injury that I guess back in those days, in the early 90s and late 80s, the diagnoses of injuries probably, you know, was a little bit slower to come than it is now. I mean, we have so many different, you know, options at our fingertips and so many specialty doctors that you can get to see in the blink of an eye. But I had a shoulder injury in football my senior year in high school that carried over into my senior year in the, you know, in baseball for my high school year. And then when I got to the junior college my first year, I had issues upon getting my physical. I found out that I had a rotator cuff tear and a label tear. After having surgery on that my freshman year, um I had very limited play in time, but wouldn't give up the experiences I had for those two years, even though I didn't get a lot of play in time. I still had a ball doing what I was doing and the camaraderie of the team and everything. I think that uh that was something that to this day I wouldn't, you know, have passed up if I had the opportunity to do it all over again.

Stephen Beam 4:48

Finished there and then where did you go?

Choosing Alabama And Athletic Training

Todd McCall 4:50

Finished there with the University of Alabama. Troy University uh was right up the road. It was about 30 miles from my hometown. Both of my parents actually went to the old Troy State University. Like I said, I was always all up into the sports arena in some form or fashion. And there was this guy by the name of Paul Bear Bryant that was the coach at Alabama. But I grew up being an Alabama fan, and you know, the one thing that I wanted to do after my shoulder injury, I was looking at going to physical therapy school. The Alabama route was where I really wanted to go. And back then, if you grew up being an Auburn or Alabama fan in the state of Alabama, you went to either Alabama or Auburn for the most part. I wanted to go to Alabama and get my degree, and um, after going through my shoulder injury, I had a fellow by the name of Marshall Smith in Dauphin that actually did my rehab, and he was the old head athletic trainer at Troy. Going through my rehabilitative phases and talking with Marshall a little bit about where I wanted my studies to go, he kind of led me into this athletic training realm, and they had a really, really good athletic training curriculum at Alabama, interestingly enough, that was modeled after probably the oldest athletic training curriculum in the Southeast, and that's the one right here at Southern Mist that uh Doc Harrington and Jim Gillespie began. Made it up to Alabama, got into the athletic training curriculum there, and the experiences then led me to Southern Miss to get my master's four years later.

Rotations Across Multiple Sports

Stephen Beam 6:17

So you were at Alabama. Did you work with all sports or just some of the sports?

Todd McCall 6:22

You know, I had a lot of opportunities. What they do when you get into the curriculum is kind of like nursing students go to the hospitals and, you know, different areas to do their clinical rotations. Um, our clinical rotations were at different sports arenas. So I worked with football for two years. I worked at a local high school for a semester, I worked men's basketball for a full year, my last year there, and I also got a chance to double-dabble with the women's gymnastics team too. One thing about being an athletic trainer, although you may be in season with one sport, you get an opportunity to kind of work with all sports there dependent upon what the needs are. For example, if you've got a big track and field meet going on for four or five days, it's all hands on deck. But I got a chance to deal with a little bit of everybody at the capstone. And um, you know, different experiences lead to just more experiences, I guess you could say, but I really enjoyed all of them.

Stephen Beam 7:18

Who was the basketball coach then?

Todd McCall 7:20

The basketball coach at the time was David Hobbs. He was the uh coach that had I think it was two or three years before replaced Wimp Sanderson as the head coach there.

Stephen Beam 7:30

Aaron Ross Powell I was hoping it was Wimp, because I understand he had some stories.

Todd McCall 7:35

Wimp, uh I was around Wimp just a couple of times, but you know, there was a lot of stories go along with Wimp. I mean, it started off with his bulldog scowl on the sidelines to his plaid jacket that he wore at every game, to some of his practice habits at times. But um I never was around him a lot. Like I said, I I met him a couple of times, but um Coach Hobbs had taken over when I really got my teeth sunk into the basketball program.

Stephen Beam 7:59

Who's a football coach?

Todd McCall 8:00

Gene Stallins.

Stephen Beam 8:01

Gene Stallins, I remember him. He won a national championship, didn't he?

Todd McCall 8:05

He won a national championship, as Coach Stallins always used to like to tell everybody. He went from being the most hated coach at the University of Alabama because he lost his first three games there to being a national championship coach and being one of the most loved.

Stephen Beam 8:19

Yeah. So So any stories about him? Oh. And you know the one I would like to hear.

Gene Stallings: Humor And Heart

Todd McCall 8:25

Dr. Beam, there's a bunch of stories about him. Um one particular day we were playing Auburn. Coach Stalins always wore, you know, the suit. I mean, he was Mr., you know, old school, prim and proper on the sidelines, full suit and tie. I'm talking about the nice shoes. You know, it's not the collared shirts and the tennis shoes that the coaches wear now. And he always had choice words for the officials, but usually if he got on the officials, it was worthy. And he never wore a headset unless he wanted to talk to somebody. Really old school compared to what you see on the sidelines today. Well, there was a call against Auburn one year. Call was against Alabama playing. Call was against Alabama. Playing Auburn. Play in Auburn. And he was not a fan of the call. Can't remember exactly what the call was, but anyway, you've got to be careful if you're a head football coach, or any coach for that matter on the sidelines, because you can be ejected from the game if it gets ugly. On this particular day in '94, this call goes against us, and I guess you can say to point out one guy and, you know, really get on him without, you know, and try to deflect at the same time so he doesn't get in too much trouble himself. He looks at a guy and excuse the French, but he goes, Hey man, you asshole, hey man, you asshole. Before the referee can get over there to have a conversation with him about the call, he comes over and he says, Coach, he says, you know, that's one warning, one more warning now. He goes, Hey man, I ain't talking to you, I'm talking to that asshole over there. So the next thing you know is this official comes over. He's like, Coach, we're not gonna put up with your language on the field. You're not gonna sit there and call us out like that. You know, if you want to talk to us, fine. We'll have a conversation. But you're not gonna sit there and use that language against us. He goes, Hey man, you two dumb asses ain't talking to y'all. I'm talking to the asshole over there. Points out a third one. Needless to say, I think he got his point across. And at the end of the game, all matters were resolved. But uh it was one of those deals where it was one of the most interesting things I've ever seen, but it was also one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen, too. There's a lot of stories of Coach Stallings. One thing that I don't think a lot of people probably know, maybe they do, is you know, he did have a son that had Down syndrome. When John Mark was born, I think they'd given him like ten years to live. And it turned out to be, I think, one of the most fascinating stories that people can hear. But also to be around it, one thing that a l you know people don't understand about what head coaches do behind the scenes is what do they do with their free time? Do they get out and speak in public? Do they make charity visits? Do they hold charity golf tournaments and raise money? One thing that was really cool is he brought John Mark around the office all the time. And the guy that I worked for at the time, his name was Bill McDonald. We called him Coach Mack because he had been a basketball coach in his high school days. And John Mark loved Coach Mack. And so he would always come to the athletic training room. And if you'd see some of the, I guess you can say in society, some of the worst kids turn into some of the best kids that you would ever meet when John Mark would come around. But if it was putting an ice bag on somebody's hamstring because they were having issues or putting a heat pad on somebody, John Mark was that guy that was ever more present just about every day. And he would go with us on the road and and I mean, and he was as big of a part of the team as Coach Stallins was. And as we always used to say, Coach Stallins always rode in the second state trooper car. John Mark rode in the front seat of the first state trooper cars and went with the team to the stadium.

John Mark And The RISE Legacy

Stephen Beam 12:01

How old was he, John Mark?

Todd McCall 12:03

So John Mark passed away, I think, when he was forty-two. Okay.

Stephen Beam 12:07

So during that time period he was

Todd McCall 12:10

John Mark was probably in his mid-twenties, somewhere around mid-twenties, late twenties. But what a lot of people don't understand about what Coach Stallins did is everywhere we went, he always had a Friday night with John Mark where they would go and they would do a local trip somewhere. If we played in Birmingham, it was a children's hospital. And John Mark wanted to be around all those kids and to see his interactions with, you know, those kids in the hospital. I tell you right now, I mean, it's just one of those things that is almost impossible to describe. It was very powerful. As they would continue to do all these trips, and you know, Coach Stalins, I think as John Mark continued to get older, he really got involved with the disabled community. They started the RISE program at Alabama, which is now a school for um disabled kids. It's really big. I think they've got six or eight RISE school programs across the country. I think that Coach Sweeney at um Clemson started one up at uh Clemson, there's one at Oklahoma State, they're all across. But Coach Dollins always used to sit there and say he never understood why disabled kids had to pay large amounts of money to go to school when those kids that were not disabled got to go for free. A lot of things go into those experiences at Alabama that I'll always be uh, you know, very proud to say I was a part of. Coach Dollins could probably chew the best rear end of anybody I've ever seen as far as a coach is concerned. But the other side to what he brought to the table for all of his players and especially his involvement with the disabled community, I mean, when I say that it was it was special, especially disabled kids, it was magical, to be honest with you.

Stephen Beam 13:59

That's a powerful story.

Todd McCall 14:00

VERY

Stephen Beam 14:01

Finished up at Alabama, you had your undergraduate degree and you looked around to find a program to do a master's degree, I'm assuming.

Southern Miss GA And First Jobs

Todd McCall 14:12

Yes. So I graduated in December of 1996, and uh started my master's in the spring of nineteen ninety-seven at Alabama. The national organization um that I'm a part of is the National Athletic Trainers Association, the NATA. And at the time, um the president of the NATA was a fellow by the name of Kent Fawb, and he was also the head athletic trainer for the Detroit Lions at the time. I had applied, I had um worked a summer with the Canadian Football League in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1995, doing an internship. Then I went to the Jacksonville Jaguars in the summer of 1996 in the NFL to work for three and a half months, and then I was looking to try to get me one of these long-term full season internships that a lot of athletic trainers still do to this day to try to, you know, if you want to try to get your foot into the door with the National Football League, one of the things that you do is you continue to do a couple of internships over a two or three year period of time. And if you build a good name for yourself, then hopefully the opportunities come along. No guarantee, but you know, it's kind of like what we did trying to get into the college realm at the time. Well, I had an opportunity to go and work with the Detroit Lions going into the summer of 1997, and at the time they hired a new football coach from Georgia Tech named Bobby Ross. And when Coach Ross was hired, they gave Mr. Fobb the ability to either number one bring another fresh out of school intern in to work with him, or they would let him, if they wanted to, hire another full-time, but they would have to give up the internship program. So about, let's see, this goes into the first week of June in 97. I get a call two weeks before I'm supposed to leave. Talk to Mr. Fob, I'm ready to pack my bags and head that way, and he gives me the unfortunate news. But, you know, I think at the end of the day I understood exactly what was going on. If you get that opportunity to hire another full-time person that's got experience, and why bring somebody in that doesn't. So everything's good. I started looking for a GA position at the time, a graduate assistantship here on the college level. The first person that came to me was a fellow by the name of Ken Wright, who was our curriculum director at Alabama. He had a connection at Mississippi State. They had a graduate assistantship route that you could go get your master's for free, but you'd work with kids at high schools, you know, out of Octipaha County Hospital up there. Um, and they would just pay for you to get your master's degree in basically whatever you wanted to get it in while you were there. I get an offer from Mississippi State and Octipaha County Hospital on a Wednesday. I asked him to give me until Monday to let me just kind of get all my stuff together. And on Friday morning of that week, I get a call from Jim Gillespie. He said, Bill McDonald is uh giving me your name. I'm looking for a graduate assistant to come help us at Southern Miss. Are you interested?

Stephen Beam 17:22

He was the head trainer then.

Georgia Southern To Marshall

We Are Marshall And Community

Todd McCall 17:24

He was the head athletic trainer here at Southern Miss, yeah. And he was also the curriculum director here. High school at the time just was not my calling, and I knew that. But then I wanted to be on either the professional or the college stage, and so I came over here um on that Monday and I interviewed with Jim and took the job and went back and called Mississippi State and told them that I had taken another position. I was very grateful for the opportunity, but I just thought at the time this is where I needed to be. Luckily I was able to uh lock this position down. I started uh about a month and a half later, finished up my master's. Now, starting my master's at Alabama in the spring of 97, I already had 12 hours behind me, and so I transferred six in and I stayed here for two semesters, fall of '97 and the spring of ninety eight. Finished my master's up here, and then I took off to Georgia Southern and got my first job. How long were you at Georgia Southern? So, you know, it's crazy how the athletic community works. I mean, you network, as you well know, you know, networking is probably what gets you places faster than anything else these days. I was at Georgia Southern for one year. Head coach at Georgia Southern, his name was Greg Polinski. He actually worked at Alabama under Coach Sanderson with Coach Hobbes. In '94, Coach Polinski had taken the Georgia Southern job, men's basketball position. Unfortunately, at the time, Georgia Southern was being investigated and ultimately went on probation for four years with the previous coaching staff that they had, and they lost, I think, down to like five scholarshipped athletes. So by then they just took scholarships away. So you could still put 14 on the team, but nine of the fourteen at the time had to be walk-ons. So you well know you you dealt with this for a long period of time in the college world. You know, if you get walk-ons and not scholarship athletes, there's gonna be a little bit of a taper in athletic ability. So when I got to Georgia Southern in '98, I worked with Coach Polinski for one year. And the new AD at the time when I got there, unfortunately, Coach Polinski was not his original hire, and he cut him loose after his four-year run on his contract. And even considering the fact that we were above a 500 team, and at that point in time we still only had, I think it was 11 scholarship athletes. We didn't even have a whole scholarship team. He cut him loose, they bring a new coaching staff in, and um, luckily networking plays a part of this. Uh, I had a guy named Paul Helsel that was a student strength coach at Alabama that I went to school with, and he was at the time the assistant strength coach at Marshall University. Well, in the summer of 99, I get a call. He calls me up and says, Todd, I'm, you know, this school is looking for another football athletic trainer. They came and asked me if I had anybody that I would recommend are you interested. I submit my resume, and two weeks later I fly to Huntington, West Virginia, and meet with a fellow named Bob Pruitt. You know, his son, Steve Pruitt, used to coach for where was it, Mindenhall, right up the road, I think, for a while. And I worked for Coach Pruitt at Marshall for uh for two years. And there's a lot to be said about that plane crash up there. So the experiences I had at Marshall, I think, are we could take a left-hand turn down that road too if you'd like to, but I tell you right now, what a special place that was. You know, being around the history behind the plane crash, how the city really comes together and supports that school. I mean, that is something that is, I guess you can say, magical of its own kind, too.

Stephen Beam 21:03

Aaron Powell They made the movie We Are Marshall, and any of the listeners don't really know what Todd's talking about. Find that movie and watch it. It's an amazing story. Okay, so you worked two years there, and then where did you go?

To Wyoming: Altitude And Adaptation

Todd McCall 21:18

Two years at Marshall. I was the assisted athletic trainer, but I was the head football athletic trainer.

Stephen Beam 21:25

Okay.

Weather Whiplash And Medical Challenges

Todd McCall 21:26

At twenty six years old, and at the time I was the youngest in Division I in that position, being the head football athletic trainer in Division I school. Really fortunate to have had the opportunities I had to say the least. After that two-year period, the old athletic director, his name was Lee Moon, that had been at Marshall, was at this point in time the athletic director at the University of Wyoming. What turns out to be a weekend on the Ohio River, one of our boosters had a big nice boat, and we go cruising up and down the Ohio River, and it's one of those. Deals where we had a couple of old employees from Marshall that had come in that weekend, and I just got a chance to meet Coach Moon. Next thing I know is a month later, fly out to Laramie, Wyoming. He's got a fellow that had been the head athletic trainer there for years. His name was Bill Lyons, and he had been really active in the National Athletic Trainers Association, too. He was moving into the academic realm, looking to go towards, you know, move another couple of years towards his retirement. So they offered me the position to be the director of sports medicine at Wyoming. So I left and went to Wyoming in 2001. Tell us about some of your experiences there. Wyoming's an interesting place. It's beautiful. Beautiful. If you like the outdoors, it is one of the most beautiful places I think that you could ever look to go. Took the job there and I got there, I think, on July the 25th. So we were about seven to ten days outside of starting preseason football. On August the 7th, we had to plow the field because we had 11 inches of snow on the ground. Now, let's remember on August the 7th down here in the south, you're worried about how much weight you're going to lose because it's going to be 115 degrees outside of the heat index. Very interesting now, to say the least, very interesting. A week later, after that, I go out and it's 85 degrees, and you know, one thing to be said about Laramie, Wyoming is 7,200 feet above sea level. So when the skies are clear in the big sky country, it's hot when you're 7,200 feet above sea level. And we had the highest altitude football stadium in the country there at 7,220 feet. Well, we go out to practice. Now, remind you, a week before, on August the 7th, it snowed and we had to plow the field. The next day it's back up to 85 degrees. Everybody's hot and you're back out there in shorts and t-shirts and you're just moving right along with your practice schedule as you always do. I guess the latter part of the next week, head football coach Vic Coning comes up and looks at me and he says, You see those gray clouds over that western range? And I said, Yes, sir. He says, Looks at his watch and he said, About 30 minutes it's gonna be rough for you. I was like, Okay, good. Have no idea what he's talking about. About twenty minutes later, the winds pick up and the temperature starts to drop. And about 35 minutes later, I was standing behind a cherry picker and all the coaches were pulling out park jackets and sweat on pants and toboggins and those types of things from duffel bags they had brought with them. Nobody f you know ever decided to share the fact that the weather can change within two hours. We went back in after practice, it was twenty-six degrees outside, and we had about another six inches of snow on the ground when it was all over. So it was you never knew what was coming out there. And plus, I guess from a medical side, the depleted oxygen in the air was a lot different when it came to getting kids back on the field to play, too. That also played a big part in, you know, the challenges, I guess you can say, that, you know, comes along with the job. Absolutely. I like to get out and I like used to like to jog and I ran marathons, you know, in my younger days, uh just so it was one of those things on the bucket list I could say that it did. When you go up to a place that's 7,000 feet above sea level, let's just say that things you do for your cardio when it comes to exercising takes a whole different route than what you're used to. The depleted oxygen in the air, I mean, it's it's very interesting. For example, we used to have three practice fields out there, and we used to call it the North 40. So you would leave the football stadium and you'd go about a quarter mile down the road, and we had practice fields one, two, and three, full-size practice fields. Why a football team used to use three fields to this day, I don't know, but we did. Well, I was standing at the bottom of the middle field, and we had a guy that went down my first week, I think it was practice number three, on the top of field number three. So I've got to run about 120 yards to get to him. And by the time I got to him, head coach comes up and he says, What's wrong with AJ's knee? And I looked at him, I said, if you'll give me about two minutes to get my air, I'll dig and look at him and tell him exactly what I think is wrong wrong with his knee. But it would take your breath away. I it took you a while to just adjust, and it's nothing like being out at football practice on the first day of practice with a bunch of guys from Texas that are going through stretches and then just fall over from altitude sickness.

Return To Southern Miss

Stephen Beam 26:46

So But you survived it.

Todd McCall 26:48

I survived it. It was great.

Stephen Beam 26:49

How long were you there?

Todd McCall 26:51

I was there for 19 months. Jim Gillespie that I'd worked for here at Southern, um he was a head athlete training the curriculum director. So I had when I was in school here, going back to my Southern Miss days, I had the opportunity not only to work on the field um as a graduate assistant, working under Jim, but he also taught in the classroom, so I also had the ability to go back and start teaching in the classroom some as a graduate assistant, same as what you used to do back when you taught. So he calls me up and they had brought, when he retired in '99, they brought a former student of his named Matt Smith in here who stayed for four years. And then he decided to get out and go into the private sector, and um, now he's really big into Don Joy orthopedic knee bracing and dealing with DME products with a lot of doctors in um both Mississippi and Louisiana. Matt leaves, I come in and they offer me the job, huge part, you know, thanks to Jim. And then also Coach Byrr was still here too. So I had that connection as well after working with him as a graduate assistant. Came back in to Southern Miss in March of 2003, and here I am today.

What A Head Athletic Trainer Does

Stephen Beam 28:04

A lot of wonderful memories. Um a lot of football trips with you and Jim and others. So that's twenty two years since you've been head athletic trainer. Doesn't seem possible. Tell us a little bit about the responsibilities of a head athletic trainer at a Division I school.

Todd McCall 28:31

Now that list is long. First and foremost, my job is to make sure that every athlete that we've got, whether it's your starting quarterback for the football team or whether it's one of the many members of the cheerleading squad, is to provide all those athletes the highest quality of medical care that they deserve while they represent our institution. My associations with, you know, going back to you when you were our head team physician and the 42, 43 physicians that I deal with, I mean, yes, forty-two to forty-three of them, I think, is what my count is that I deal with almost daily here in Hattiesburg, um, whether it's our orthopedic group at Southern Bone and Joint, whether it's the Azars over at Southern Surgery and Urology, whether it's the Lucas's over at Oak Grove Family Dentistry, you just pick one, whether they're at Wesley campus or they're over at Forest General and the Hattiesburg Clinic at campus. The associations that I have with doctors, I think, is probably one of the things that I'm most thankful for, because I can't do my job without those people, you know, in line helping me and giving me backdoor service care to all of our athletes. Taking care of the athletes, it starts off when they come to campus and we have to do physicals on them, making decisions based off of any conditions or injuries that they may have, whether or not we allow them to play or not. The rehab part, I'm not gonna lie to you, that's probably where I find the fruits of my labors. Like I tell everybody, if I'm ever asked, you know, how long does it take for you to get an ACL back, first of all, how how hard does the kid want to work? I don't do anything. I just have the 50-yard line seat to watch him or her work like crazy to get back in a particular amount of time. And in that time, you hopefully have an impact on them in some form or fashion. You get to know them more on an intimate basis about their family. You know what is good, what's bad, you hear their stories. Some point in time, like Jim used to say, and like uh Coach Mack used to say when I was at Alabama, you gotta be something positive for them if you're gonna spend time with them because they're going through a hard time. Yeah, that's where I get the fruits of my labors. I get to spend time with kids. I was once, you know, a baseball player myself, tore my shoulder up, as I stated earlier, and uh didn't get a chance to really come back and be the player that I wanted to be, but I can now assist people in coming back and being the players they want to be.

Rehab Philosophy And Relationships

Stephen Beam 30:56

So if you were a baseball player today and did the same thing to your shoulder, would you be able to come back?

Todd McCall 31:03

Things have changed. Great question. Things have changed significantly. When I injured my shoulder, I had a rotator cuff tear and a labral tear. Labrum is the, you know, little soft tissue that sits in the ball and socket joint, and that's what all of your ligaments basically go in and attach around. But if you tear your labrum, then you've got an unstable shoulder. Used to, if you had an unstable shoulder, they would move parts around and and basically block a motion in your shoulder so that you didn't sublux or dislocate like I did. In layman's terms, I guess that's the best way I can put it. Nowadays, they just fix the problem. So if you've got a little tear in your label tissue, it's just like having a tear in your shirt. You just go and throw a few stitches in that tear in your shirt, you close the hole up, and then all of a sudden you've got a place that no longer has a hole in it anymore. Well, they do the same types of procedures to label repairs now. Science has definitely changed. I would like to think that if the science had been the same back then as it is now, I would like to think that I'd had a lot of other opportunities to play, yes.

Stephen Beam 32:07

Aaron Ross Powell I know that uh I'll ask you to speak to neurosurgeons over the last, say, 20 years for baseball pitchers. What comes to mind when you think about how that's advanced?

Todd McCall 32:19

Aaron Ross Powell We can talk about neuro, we can talk about ortho, you can talk about anything you want to, but the science for pitchers has come a long way. You know, they named an elbow surgery after a former baseball player because he was the first one that ever had that particular type of surgery done, Tommy John, with the onocollateral ligament repair. So they did that over at the Andrews Institute, and Dr. Andrews now is the godfather of a lot of different procedures out there.

Stephen Beam 32:45

That's in Birmingham, right?

How Shoulder Care Evolved

Pitchers, Tommy John, And Prevention

Todd McCall 32:47

In Birmingham. He's retired now, but he's still got the Andrews Institute, both Birmingham and Pensacola now. But Tommy John's surgery now is almost like ACL ligament of the knee was 35 years ago. Now it's just a common injury that, you know, is not a, I guess you can say a termed specialty in a lot of ways, because it's just a standard injury that you have now. I think the one thing that we see that has has come to pass is is young kids getting those elbow injuries. You know, not as many shoulder injuries, although we do see those as well. But that Tommy John injury in the elbow seems to be the one that you deal with in pitchers and baseball mo more so than any other of the other injuries. But there's a lot that goes into trying to maintain the shoulder, whether you have an old injury that required surgery or not. And when I say the shoulder, the elbow goes right along with it. They're kind of both working generally with each other, you know, one and the same. My assistant, Sven Pearson, for example, baseball, you know, people ask me all the time, well, can't imagine how many injuries you deal with in football and all the people that you have to get back, you know, from ACLs and shoulders and all that. What does a baseball athlete trainer do? He's got his hands slammed full with Tommy Johns year in and year out, whether they come in and they're on the backside of a rehab, or if we have an unfortunate situation where an athlete has one here, you just never know what the ticking time bomb is of the elbow because you don't know what their background was and how long they've been pitching and going back to that younger sector when young kids are trying to throw curveballs for the first time. What is their elbows gone through over time? There's a lot of maintenance stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Stephen Beam 34:36

And weight work.

Todd McCall 34:37

Oh, weight work, hands-on stuff with the athletic trainer too. We always say they get a chance to work out three times a week, they're with the athletic trainer if you're a pitcher seven days a week because they've got to do something to maintain flexibility, mobility, strength of the arm, both the forearm and the shoulder, you know. Be honest with you, Dr. Bamis, the whole body now.

Stephen Beam 34:58

Finally, let's finish up with this. Let's talk about the athletes that you work with. Any significant changes that you've noticed over your years in athletic training? I guess I'm talking about response to your attempts to help them and maybe response to coaching or we have a lot of different backgrounds to stay in time, and of course, with the NIL and other things, but leaving the money part of it out. Any significant changes?

Todd McCall 35:31

Well, you know, you've had the change in science and how we fix things. When you have a change in science of how you fix things from a physician standpoint, there's also how we quote unquote fix things from a rehabilitative standpoint. Every new generation comes out and they've got a different attitude as well. Just like what you see in the curve with what happens in science, I guess you can say you can sit there and link those two together. Old school was a simpler school, new school today. I mean, we've got this thing called the World Wide Web, for goodness sakes.

Stephen Beam 36:00

I've heard of that.

Athletes Today: Trust And Information

Todd McCall 36:01

You've heard of that. These athletes can go online and they can, believe it or not, they research these things out and they come up with good questions, you know, when they have injuries. And sometimes they'll come up with something that is so far out of whack with what the treatment should be, but a lot of the challenges of what I deal with today happens to be on trying to stay on top of different treatment opinions and those types of things. And at the end of the day, you've still got to make sure that they trust you in what your opinions are. That is tough from time to time. But I think with experience and athletes seeing, you know, that we do invest our times into our student athletes and there are good outcomes, and sometimes a person that can do the best marketing for you is the people that you work with. And so if you've got good outcomes with athletes, they tend to talk a lot too. Not only do they look stuff up, not only do they come up with what their own opinions are, sometimes they even try to diagnose their own injuries. Trust goes a long way. And I think a lot of the interpersonal relationships that we try to maintain with our athletes sometimes can be a little bit fickle on them in the early goings, but at the end of the day, you know, if you invest your time in people, it's still like it always was. You know, there's a trust to be, I guess you can say, awarded if you earn it.

Stephen Beam 37:17

Thank you, Todd.

Todd McCall 37:18

Thank you.

Stephen Beam 37:19

There's a lot that goes on with athletic trainers. It's not necessarily has to do with fixing injuries, but dealing with athletes and helping them along to heal their own injuries. Thanks for spending time with us in Cold Springs. If you enjoyed today's story, please like, subscribe, and share the show with someone who appreciates a good twist and a strong sense of place. You can find more about me by visiting the letter J Stephen with a phbeam.com, including where to purchase my novels, The Death Letter and the Bondage of Innocence. And yes, there's a third one coming out later this year. Until next time. Keep your Porsche Light on and your pen ready to get an idea, write it down before it grows legs and walks off without you. Support for stories from Cold Springs comes from MCS Home Center Bellevue. Visit them at 7329 US 98 in Hattiesburg. Tell them Cold Springs sent you.