It's not hard to get a look at what former Ravens cornerback Gary Baxter believed at the time was the absolute worst moment of his life. Just go to YouTube, type the words Gary Baxter and knee injury into the search field. A video pops right out. Second down for Plumber. He's going deep down the sidelines for Walker, almost a leaping catch. He was covered well as Gary Baxter ad position. The clip is from an NFL game played on October twenty second, two thousand and six, Cleveland Browns against the Denver Broncos in Cleveland. Baxter is playing cornerback for the Browns. He had joined the Ravens six years earlier as a second round draft pick from Baylor, the number sixty two overall selection in two thousand and one. That's pretty high. Baxter was fast and smart, a good cover corner. By his second season, he was starting on a very good Baltimore defense, and he continued to start until his rookie contract expired, at which point he became a free agent and signed with the Browns. That's a whole other story I'll get to in a few minutes. But first back to the game in two thousand and six. It's the second quarter. The Broncos are ahead and driving, and one of their receivers, Javon Walker, runs a deep route down the near sideline into the red zone. Baxter runs right with him. Denverse quarterback Jake Plummer lobs a pass toward them. It's not a great pass, it's short. Walker and Baxter both turned and jump for the ball, which falls to the ground incomplete. It's an innocent looking play, but there's nothing innocent about it. Walker quickly gets to his feet, but Baxter stays on the ground, clearly in discomfort and increasingly agitated. Walker bends over to look at him and immediately begins motioning to the Browns bench. There's no doubt what he's saying, Get over here now. Baxter looks like he's hurt his leg. Twist it underneath him as it was trying to go back. It looked like one of his knees just got trapped underneath. No one could have known it at the time, but Baxter had just taken his last snap in the NFL. He was a high price free agent, still young, a starter in the prime of his career, with years of good football ahead of him, it seemed, but he never played another down. Welcome to What Happened to That Guy? A podcast about former Ravens and life after football. I'm your host John Eisenberg. Today's episode is about how your worst nightmare can turn out to be not so bad after all, and actually, weirdly, maybe the best thing that ever happened to you. That's Gary Baxter's story. We spoke on the phone recently. He's forty years old now and living and working in Texas, where he was born and raised. FYI, he was on a cell phone in the back of an uber when we spoke, and the sound quality isn't the greatest, but it's the best we could do. Hooking up with Gary wasn't easy. He is a busy guy. If you had not been hurt, and I know you had a very serious injury with your patella right on both knees at the same time, If you had not been hurt like that, would you have come to this? Do you think? I mean? What I'm asking is, do you the injury was the best thing in a weird way. It was. It shaped the rest of your life. It did. If I wouldn't have been hurt, I wouldn't never be here. Today had turned out to be one of the worst ents for me, turning that to be one that absolutely past the If I wouldn't have been hurt, I wouldn't be here right now. I'll probably be doing marcial real estate. And this is a whole new world that's opened up to me and and absolutely amazing. I love what I do. I have fun. I'll get to what he's doing now in a minute, and by the way, I completely agree it is amazing. But first, let me finish the story of his injury, because that's the key to everything. When the Browns doctors got Baxter off the field and checked him out that day in Cleveland, they were shocked by what they found. He had torn the poteller tendon in his right knee and the pateller tendon in his left knee. It was like something Stephen King might have written in one of his horror novels, both knees wrecked simultaneously. Cleveland's head coach Romeo Crenell wore a shocked expression as he gave the news to the media after the game. I've never seen anything like this in thirty five years of coaching, Kronell said. Two days later, Baxter underwent surgery on both knees. It was a catastrophic situation. He stayed in the hospital for two months, but he was young and strong otherwise, still thought he was bulletproof, and he vowed to play again. The Browns got him going on what was at the time a standard rehab program for athletes who had undergone knee surgery. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, lots of exercise, and time in the gym. Baxter did it all, but all along he was now by the thought that a more effective rehab program, a better solution, might be available somewhere out there in the world. That's how his mind works. By the way, then and now, he earned a degree in communications at Baylor. But he's really a natural tinkerer that and an entrepreneur, a guy who takes stock of situations and wonders, what are my options here? And could I be doing something better? That's what he thought for days, for weeks, for months as he stared down at his injured knees. Am I doing the right thing? Is this really my best option when I have my knee injury? I know we got the basic regular OTPC play. I'm looking for something special, and no one knew what the hell I was talking about it. It's got to be a place that I can go to that if I want to go and try to figure out how to get better, and there was none. I decided that I was going to go outside of the country. I want to counter them with the Germany, with many other different places to look and learn. And that's why I really got and understanding medicine than said, well, it doesn't exist, and I'm gonna build what it is that I'm looking for. Did you hear him? He wasn't satisfied with the rehab program that had been prescribed for him, so he started jumping on airplanes and looking elsewhere Canada, Israel, Germany, and he was much happier with what he found in those places. When he says it didn't exist, he means it didn't exist here in the United States. Without getting into too much detail. Today, in twenty nineteen, the fields of sports medicine and athletic performance and recovery are far more sophisticated than they were in two thousand and six when Baxter got hurt. There's a lot of technology involved, better monitoring of the body, better ideas about how to anticipate injuries and recover from them, and according to Baxter, many of these advanced techniques were available in other countries before they came to America. When he was back home for good in early two thousand and seven, he spoke with trainers and doctors about what he'd seen abroad, wondering why he couldn't access it at home. I was trying to suit the own people and complain as the people, and people was like, yeah, no, well it doesn't exist. It's so good if I haven't anyone, that's just it, and I ran so a bunch of resistance. Baxter eventually rehabbed his knees to the point where he could get back on the practice field. He went to training camp with the Browns in the summer of two thousand and seven, but there was no fairy tale ending. It became apparent that he couldn't play, at least not well enough to suit up in the regular season. The Browns parted ways with him. His career was over. What would you do now? A young man with decades of life ahead of him. Ironically, it was his nightmarish injury experience that set him on the right course trying to get a better grip on just who Gary Baxter is. I spoke to Brian Billick, the Ravens former head coach and a recent inductee into the team's Ring of Honor. He was coaching the team when Baxter was drafted, sum him up as the guy that came in and as a player, you know, anytime you bring a young player in, it's a transition, and there are certain guys. Gary was one of those that immediately you gravitated towards him because you saw there was a great character there. You saw that he got it. Sometimes things pan out, sometimes they don't, but he was one early on that you recognized, this is the kind of guy you wanted to have in the organization. He is now a CEO and founder of a healthcare company. Wow, and why does that not surprise me? Pardon Parcel was saying earlier he had a sense of the bigger picture. A lot of times you get young guys in and it's understandable they're very focused on themselves, are very focused on their specific situation. But you got that sense that Gary did have that bigger perspective and understood how it all worked. Now, as in the media or the fans, they no one saw that. But you you just saw you do because you see not only in the day to day the way he conducts himself, but the way he interacts with his teammates, the way he interacts with the coaches, the way he interacts with Jeff, everybody in the organization. When I would go out and interact with players that we were going to draft, you'd go out ostensibly to work them out, but you really need to do do you had the film, you had the combine, I really would want to spend time, and I'd take him out to dinner because I want to see how did he deal with the waitress, how did he deal with the guy park in the car, how to deal with the other people, just in terms of what kind of personality he had. And Gary was one of those guys. That's why he doesn't surprise me that he's gone on and done the things that he's done, because you could tell with the way he interacted with everybody in the building that he was one of those guys that just got it. By two thousand and four, his fourth year in Baltimore, Baxter was a standout on one of the NFL's best defenses. He had more solo tackles that season than any Raven other than Ray Lewis. Chris McAllister was the cornerback on the other side, a pro bowler, and teams shied away from him, so Baxter got to work out and he held up. He was credited with more passes defended that season than any member of the Baltimore secondary other than ed Reid. Baxter could have and probably should have been in Baltimore for a lot longer than four years. In those days, really still, when they hit on a high draft pick, the Ravens try to find a way to keep the guy. But in two thousand and four, the rest of the NFL noticed that the cornerback playing opposite McAlister was pretty good, and Baxter's rookie contract expired after that season, making him a free agent. Other teams showed interest. Baxter was conflicted. He wanted to stay, but he scheduled a trip to Cleveland. The Ravens didn't want to lose him. General manager Ozzie knew Some called and asked him meet with him. Before Baxter got on the plane. They met, and I swear I am not making this up. They met at a McDonald's. A kid was having a birthday, party. At the next table, when Back and Ozzie got together to talk finances and the future of the Ravens Secondary. They spoke softly so they wouldn't ruin the party, and they made plans to get back together and keep talking, maybe not at McDonald's when Baxter got back, but he never did come back from Cleveland. The Browns made him a big offer, and Baxter signed. He went to Cleveland, thinking he'd be there for years, maybe he become part of the franchises architecture. But he only played five games in two thousand and five before a torn pectoral muscle ended his season. Then he tore up his knees in October two thousand and six. A year later, when he realized he was done with football, he went home to Tyler, Texas, a bustling small town east to Dallas, where he'd grown up and played on a state championship high school football team a decade earlier. Now he was twenty nine and at a crossroads. He had a lot going for him, a college degree, money in the bank, name recognition, an upbeat personality. He started selling commercial real estate. Making deals was interesting to him, even thrilling, But Baxter wasn't satisfied, Longing for a greater challenge, he honed his skills as a businessman. He took classes and he joined a consortium that develops CEOs. I learned how to become a businessman, got in and I applied myself and decided that I wanted to become one of the best business persons in the areas, and I want to own in on my skills and take the education that I need to keep sharpening the things up and working around very smart people every day. While all that happened, he retained vivid memories of his injury, his rehab, and the sports science he had encountered, and he stayed abreast of any new developments in that industry. He was looking for a project, a business opportunity, and he had a thought, why not what I know? Why not sports medicine. You may have heard of Tyler, Texas, because it's also the hometown of one of the greatest football players ever produced in Baxter's football mad home state, Earl Campbell, the Bruising Hall of Fame running back, grew up in Tyler and played for the University of Texas and the Houston Oilers before calling it quits after nine years in the NFL. Campbell was so linked to his hometown that it was part of his nickname, the Tyler Rose. People called him Tyler, you see, is the rose capital of Texas. There's a rose festival there every fall. Campbell, famous for steamrolling defenders, was no one's idea of a rose on the football field. He was, in fact, a thorn in the side of every defense he came up against. Now he's in his sixties and although he's lived in Houston since he played for the Oilers, he hasn't forgotten about his hometown. Carl Campbell Well both way to the same high school. Stay were state champions, were state champions obviously earlier, twenty four years older than He's from Tyler and I'm from Tall, the same high school. We always see each other at advance and we always do each other and we always kept in touch. And one day ll act, you know, we need to do something for our hometown. I've been working on something and I said that, you know, I don't want it to do anything like everybody else. You know, we don't need money here. We do this, so we do that that. I want to do something meanful and impactful. General said yes, I do too. Baxter told Campbell about the idea he'd been kicking around, a sports science and research operation promoting health and wellness for athletes. Baxter explained that he had literally gone around the world studying the subject and had all sorts of ideas. Campbell listened intently. The tyler Rose had paid a heavy price for his years on the football field. He dealt with numerous ailments since he retired. The guy his attention and we stored falcon and we store that eventual conversations meeting. One day, Earl looked at me said do you think we can do this? Absolutely? And he said, well, let's make it happen. That was a few years ago, and they did make it happen. The idea Baxter and Campbell talked about has become the Project Rose Research Institute for Sports Science, located at a top hospital in East Texas. It's a multifaceted organization with a sports medicine program, a sports science research program, a general health and wellness program, and a sleep clinic. Clients include individual athletes, high school and college sports teams, people from the general public. Baxter is the founder and CEO. Campbell the co founder. They work with doctors, scientists and researchers, all with the goal of helping athletes achieve maximum performance, recover from injuries, and enjoy life when they're through playing. And we decided that lose the madas on a building, right, we spotify people in his eraror my era when he was coming through the game, technology, the training, the recovery, the surgeries and the injuries, and then we went and looked at my time. So we did a lot of leads or to put this together. And finally, like I told him, be playing eight years, I had eight surgery, traveled around the world to find out what's the best technology out there, What is it that we can do that we can bring some people and really have a meeting for impact. I presented this the Earl and Earls said, let's roll with it. So as the founder, he's the co founder, and we decided that we was gonna make this happening, and we end up doing it, and we trund some medical providers who loved our ideal, and that's when they hit me, there's plenty money in the world the people who invest, but there's not a lot of great ideas and what we found for a lot of people will need to come on board and not just invest money, but also be a part of what you're doing. And so that's when we realized we had something very special and understanding the impact that we wanted to have, not just in our community, but we wanted to start out our goal was to positively affect that East Texas region first, then go to the States of Texas and then can roll it out to the rest of it in the state. He's been an excellent party to work with. I mean, he's our old Campbell and I will say his son told me he said, out of all the things Earl has ever did, he's never been more in in days more positive about this one project. I mean, that's super exciting. We work with a lot of cool doctors, sciences, researchers, a lot of great people, a lot of great technology out here, and we're for bring it, take it to the market so that we can positively affect people lives in a positive world. When Baxter gets going talking about it, isn't husiasm is so great he can barely stop every day. I'm excited. I love it. I'm a science health and well on it and more importantly, we know what we're doing is he's going affects so many people alive, and it's in house people. So figures out my new college. A passionate about this check I was with the ball. The project. Rose Research Institute for Sports Science is growing rapidly, not unlike a young, healthy tree, developing more branches. A brain function study is in progress, as is a deep dive into the effects of ACL surgery. Baxter is always recruiting more investors. There are plans to open branches in Dallas, Houston and other parts of Texas. They're tinkering with how to use artificial intelligence. The longer we spoke, the more I had a question I was dying to ask. Finally I did the Gary Baxter that's in the Ravens locker room all right in two thousand and two, two thousand and three. If someone had, you know, come to you and said Gary, here's what you're going to be doing, what would have been your reaction. I wouldn't have believe them. I wouldn't believe them because I started working on this project since two thousand and six. So it's just a long time in order for us to get here. And it was it was a deal for me to where I knew I wanted to do something spression. I just didn't know exactly how I was going to do it. But this right here is it's amazing for me because the research that I made to do with it and the information that I'll be able to tell to other athletes when they're done. This is a place that you're going to want to come and go to because we're gonna understand your knees and what it is that that you're doing. And everyone is different, right, Everyone is different like DNA, And this is why it's so unique and book us because we're taking a lot of this a lot of our data and doing that the AI to that data, and I'm Gonnell with solutions. For the record, he isn't working twenty four seven on Project Rose. He still has his hand in the local commercial real estate world. He's also the secretary of the NFL Alumni chapter located in Dallas. This past summer, he was in Baltimore for a football clinic. He hasn't left football entirely behind. Baylor, His alma mater recently put him in its Athletic Hall of Fame, as did the school district in Tyler. Listen, if you live in Tyler, you have no choice but to follow the lions of John Tyler high. Whenever he sees Ozzie Newsom, the former Ravens general manager who drafted him to the NFL, they laugh about the time they negotiated a contract at McDonald's. But there's no doubt where his heart is now Project Rose and will not wake up in society because it's well, who am I meeting today? Where am I going to him? What we got on the attenda? And it's always exciting. I don't know. Life is good. It's a passion of mine. So I don't consider this work. I considered this doing something that I love to do. That's a passion of dealing with the high level professionals like that every day, the signs its researchers. I mean it is very fun for me, you know. I love thinking with the Scots, figuring out some of the weirdest, geekiest teams there is and just coming out with a solution we all celebrate. It's just amazing what my new celebration now. He is from being on a football field to when we discover something, it's just exciting. It carries the same way that value has been on the football field. Man, it's like intercepting the past and running back for touchdown. Right there. It is, right there, having fun every day. We like that I'm black, we're black, and our goal is to black other people. There you have it, Episode four of What Happened to That Guy? My thanks to Gary Baxter for carving out some time in his busy schedule to speak to me. You can find out more about him and his career at Baltimore Ravens dot com slash What Happened to That Guy? With this episode, we're halfway through the first season of the podcast. There's plenty more to come. A new episode will drop in two weeks, focusing on Matt Burke, the center on the Ravens twenty twelve Super Bowl team. In his post football life, He's gone down a road that I feel safe in saying this. Very few former NFL players have taken What Happened to That Guy? He's doing stand up comedy. New episodes on Interesting Former Ravens will continue to drop every other week for the rest of the twenty nineteen season. I hope you keep listening. If you like what you're hearing, don't hesitate to leave a five star rating and write a review. Also subscribe to it so you don't miss any episodes, and share it with friends. All that helps. This podcast and The Lounge, the excellent weekly podcast from my colleagues Rhyan Mink and Garrett Downing are part of the Baltimore Ravens Podcast Network. You can tell people just search for that wherever they get their podcasts, Baltimore Ravens Podcast Network and everything will come up. Missus, John Eisenberg, I'll talk to you in two weeks

It's not hard to get a look at what former Ravens cornerback Gary Baxter believed at the time was the absolute worst moment of his life. Just go to YouTube, type the words Gary Baxter and knee injury into the search field. A video pops right out. Second down for Plumber. He's going deep down the sidelines for Walker, almost a leaping catch. He was covered well as Gary Baxter ad position. The clip is from an NFL game played on October twenty second, two thousand and six, Cleveland Browns against the Denver Broncos in Cleveland. Baxter is playing cornerback for the Browns. He had joined the Ravens six years earlier as a second round draft pick from Baylor, the number sixty two overall selection in two thousand and one. That's pretty high. Baxter was fast and smart, a good cover corner. By his second season, he was starting on a very good Baltimore defense, and he continued to start until his rookie contract expired, at which point he became a free agent and signed with the Browns. That's a whole other story I'll get to in a few minutes. But first back to the game in two thousand and six. It's the second quarter. The Broncos are ahead and driving, and one of their receivers, Javon Walker, runs a deep route down the near sideline into the red zone. Baxter runs right with him. Denverse quarterback Jake Plummer lobs a pass toward them. It's not a great pass, it's short. Walker and Baxter both turned and jump for the ball, which falls to the ground incomplete. It's an innocent looking play, but there's nothing innocent about it. Walker quickly gets to his feet, but Baxter stays on the ground, clearly in discomfort and increasingly agitated. Walker bends over to look at him and immediately begins motioning to the Browns bench. There's no doubt what he's saying, Get over here now. Baxter looks like he's hurt his leg. Twist it underneath him as it was trying to go back. It looked like one of his knees just got trapped underneath. No one could have known it at the time, but Baxter had just taken his last snap in the NFL. He was a high price free agent, still young, a starter in the prime of his career, with years of good football ahead of him, it seemed, but he never played another down. Welcome to What Happened to That Guy? A podcast about former Ravens and life after football. I'm your host John Eisenberg. Today's episode is about how your worst nightmare can turn out to be not so bad after all, and actually, weirdly, maybe the best thing that ever happened to you. That's Gary Baxter's story. We spoke on the phone recently. He's forty years old now and living and working in Texas, where he was born and raised. FYI, he was on a cell phone in the back of an uber when we spoke, and the sound quality isn't the greatest, but it's the best we could do. Hooking up with Gary wasn't easy. He is a busy guy. If you had not been hurt, and I know you had a very serious injury with your patella right on both knees at the same time, If you had not been hurt like that, would you have come to this? Do you think? I mean? What I'm asking is, do you the injury was the best thing in a weird way. It was. It shaped the rest of your life. It did. If I wouldn't have been hurt, I wouldn't never be here. Today had turned out to be one of the worst ents for me, turning that to be one that absolutely past the If I wouldn't have been hurt, I wouldn't be here right now. I'll probably be doing marcial real estate. And this is a whole new world that's opened up to me and and absolutely amazing. I love what I do. I have fun. I'll get to what he's doing now in a minute, and by the way, I completely agree it is amazing. But first, let me finish the story of his injury, because that's the key to everything. When the Browns doctors got Baxter off the field and checked him out that day in Cleveland, they were shocked by what they found. He had torn the poteller tendon in his right knee and the pateller tendon in his left knee. It was like something Stephen King might have written in one of his horror novels, both knees wrecked simultaneously. Cleveland's head coach Romeo Crenell wore a shocked expression as he gave the news to the media after the game. I've never seen anything like this in thirty five years of coaching, Kronell said. Two days later, Baxter underwent surgery on both knees. It was a catastrophic situation. He stayed in the hospital for two months, but he was young and strong otherwise, still thought he was bulletproof, and he vowed to play again. The Browns got him going on what was at the time a standard rehab program for athletes who had undergone knee surgery. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, lots of exercise, and time in the gym. Baxter did it all, but all along he was now by the thought that a more effective rehab program, a better solution, might be available somewhere out there in the world. That's how his mind works. By the way, then and now, he earned a degree in communications at Baylor. But he's really a natural tinkerer that and an entrepreneur, a guy who takes stock of situations and wonders, what are my options here? And could I be doing something better? That's what he thought for days, for weeks, for months as he stared down at his injured knees. Am I doing the right thing? Is this really my best option when I have my knee injury? I know we got the basic regular OTPC play. I'm looking for something special, and no one knew what the hell I was talking about it. It's got to be a place that I can go to that if I want to go and try to figure out how to get better, and there was none. I decided that I was going to go outside of the country. I want to counter them with the Germany, with many other different places to look and learn. And that's why I really got and understanding medicine than said, well, it doesn't exist, and I'm gonna build what it is that I'm looking for. Did you hear him? He wasn't satisfied with the rehab program that had been prescribed for him, so he started jumping on airplanes and looking elsewhere Canada, Israel, Germany, and he was much happier with what he found in those places. When he says it didn't exist, he means it didn't exist here in the United States. Without getting into too much detail. Today, in twenty nineteen, the fields of sports medicine and athletic performance and recovery are far more sophisticated than they were in two thousand and six when Baxter got hurt. There's a lot of technology involved, better monitoring of the body, better ideas about how to anticipate injuries and recover from them, and according to Baxter, many of these advanced techniques were available in other countries before they came to America. When he was back home for good in early two thousand and seven, he spoke with trainers and doctors about what he'd seen abroad, wondering why he couldn't access it at home. I was trying to suit the own people and complain as the people, and people was like, yeah, no, well it doesn't exist. It's so good if I haven't anyone, that's just it, and I ran so a bunch of resistance. Baxter eventually rehabbed his knees to the point where he could get back on the practice field. He went to training camp with the Browns in the summer of two thousand and seven, but there was no fairy tale ending. It became apparent that he couldn't play, at least not well enough to suit up in the regular season. The Browns parted ways with him. His career was over. What would you do now? A young man with decades of life ahead of him. Ironically, it was his nightmarish injury experience that set him on the right course trying to get a better grip on just who Gary Baxter is. I spoke to Brian Billick, the Ravens former head coach and a recent inductee into the team's Ring of Honor. He was coaching the team when Baxter was drafted, sum him up as the guy that came in and as a player, you know, anytime you bring a young player in, it's a transition, and there are certain guys. Gary was one of those that immediately you gravitated towards him because you saw there was a great character there. You saw that he got it. Sometimes things pan out, sometimes they don't, but he was one early on that you recognized, this is the kind of guy you wanted to have in the organization. He is now a CEO and founder of a healthcare company. Wow, and why does that not surprise me? Pardon Parcel was saying earlier he had a sense of the bigger picture. A lot of times you get young guys in and it's understandable they're very focused on themselves, are very focused on their specific situation. But you got that sense that Gary did have that bigger perspective and understood how it all worked. Now, as in the media or the fans, they no one saw that. But you you just saw you do because you see not only in the day to day the way he conducts himself, but the way he interacts with his teammates, the way he interacts with the coaches, the way he interacts with Jeff, everybody in the organization. When I would go out and interact with players that we were going to draft, you'd go out ostensibly to work them out, but you really need to do do you had the film, you had the combine, I really would want to spend time, and I'd take him out to dinner because I want to see how did he deal with the waitress, how did he deal with the guy park in the car, how to deal with the other people, just in terms of what kind of personality he had. And Gary was one of those guys. That's why he doesn't surprise me that he's gone on and done the things that he's done, because you could tell with the way he interacted with everybody in the building that he was one of those guys that just got it. By two thousand and four, his fourth year in Baltimore, Baxter was a standout on one of the NFL's best defenses. He had more solo tackles that season than any Raven other than Ray Lewis. Chris McAllister was the cornerback on the other side, a pro bowler, and teams shied away from him, so Baxter got to work out and he held up. He was credited with more passes defended that season than any member of the Baltimore secondary other than ed Reid. Baxter could have and probably should have been in Baltimore for a lot longer than four years. In those days, really still, when they hit on a high draft pick, the Ravens try to find a way to keep the guy. But in two thousand and four, the rest of the NFL noticed that the cornerback playing opposite McAlister was pretty good, and Baxter's rookie contract expired after that season, making him a free agent. Other teams showed interest. Baxter was conflicted. He wanted to stay, but he scheduled a trip to Cleveland. The Ravens didn't want to lose him. General manager Ozzie knew Some called and asked him meet with him. Before Baxter got on the plane. They met, and I swear I am not making this up. They met at a McDonald's. A kid was having a birthday, party. At the next table, when Back and Ozzie got together to talk finances and the future of the Ravens Secondary. They spoke softly so they wouldn't ruin the party, and they made plans to get back together and keep talking, maybe not at McDonald's when Baxter got back, but he never did come back from Cleveland. The Browns made him a big offer, and Baxter signed. He went to Cleveland, thinking he'd be there for years, maybe he become part of the franchises architecture. But he only played five games in two thousand and five before a torn pectoral muscle ended his season. Then he tore up his knees in October two thousand and six. A year later, when he realized he was done with football, he went home to Tyler, Texas, a bustling small town east to Dallas, where he'd grown up and played on a state championship high school football team a decade earlier. Now he was twenty nine and at a crossroads. He had a lot going for him, a college degree, money in the bank, name recognition, an upbeat personality. He started selling commercial real estate. Making deals was interesting to him, even thrilling, But Baxter wasn't satisfied, Longing for a greater challenge, he honed his skills as a businessman. He took classes and he joined a consortium that develops CEOs. I learned how to become a businessman, got in and I applied myself and decided that I wanted to become one of the best business persons in the areas, and I want to own in on my skills and take the education that I need to keep sharpening the things up and working around very smart people every day. While all that happened, he retained vivid memories of his injury, his rehab, and the sports science he had encountered, and he stayed abreast of any new developments in that industry. He was looking for a project, a business opportunity, and he had a thought, why not what I know? Why not sports medicine. You may have heard of Tyler, Texas, because it's also the hometown of one of the greatest football players ever produced in Baxter's football mad home state, Earl Campbell, the Bruising Hall of Fame running back, grew up in Tyler and played for the University of Texas and the Houston Oilers before calling it quits after nine years in the NFL. Campbell was so linked to his hometown that it was part of his nickname, the Tyler Rose. People called him Tyler, you see, is the rose capital of Texas. There's a rose festival there every fall. Campbell, famous for steamrolling defenders, was no one's idea of a rose on the football field. He was, in fact, a thorn in the side of every defense he came up against. Now he's in his sixties and although he's lived in Houston since he played for the Oilers, he hasn't forgotten about his hometown. Carl Campbell Well both way to the same high school. Stay were state champions, were state champions obviously earlier, twenty four years older than He's from Tyler and I'm from Tall, the same high school. We always see each other at advance and we always do each other and we always kept in touch. And one day ll act, you know, we need to do something for our hometown. I've been working on something and I said that, you know, I don't want it to do anything like everybody else. You know, we don't need money here. We do this, so we do that that. I want to do something meanful and impactful. General said yes, I do too. Baxter told Campbell about the idea he'd been kicking around, a sports science and research operation promoting health and wellness for athletes. Baxter explained that he had literally gone around the world studying the subject and had all sorts of ideas. Campbell listened intently. The tyler Rose had paid a heavy price for his years on the football field. He dealt with numerous ailments since he retired. The guy his attention and we stored falcon and we store that eventual conversations meeting. One day, Earl looked at me said do you think we can do this? Absolutely? And he said, well, let's make it happen. That was a few years ago, and they did make it happen. The idea Baxter and Campbell talked about has become the Project Rose Research Institute for Sports Science, located at a top hospital in East Texas. It's a multifaceted organization with a sports medicine program, a sports science research program, a general health and wellness program, and a sleep clinic. Clients include individual athletes, high school and college sports teams, people from the general public. Baxter is the founder and CEO. Campbell the co founder. They work with doctors, scientists and researchers, all with the goal of helping athletes achieve maximum performance, recover from injuries, and enjoy life when they're through playing. And we decided that lose the madas on a building, right, we spotify people in his eraror my era when he was coming through the game, technology, the training, the recovery, the surgeries and the injuries, and then we went and looked at my time. So we did a lot of leads or to put this together. And finally, like I told him, be playing eight years, I had eight surgery, traveled around the world to find out what's the best technology out there, What is it that we can do that we can bring some people and really have a meeting for impact. I presented this the Earl and Earls said, let's roll with it. So as the founder, he's the co founder, and we decided that we was gonna make this happening, and we end up doing it, and we trund some medical providers who loved our ideal, and that's when they hit me, there's plenty money in the world the people who invest, but there's not a lot of great ideas and what we found for a lot of people will need to come on board and not just invest money, but also be a part of what you're doing. And so that's when we realized we had something very special and understanding the impact that we wanted to have, not just in our community, but we wanted to start out our goal was to positively affect that East Texas region first, then go to the States of Texas and then can roll it out to the rest of it in the state. He's been an excellent party to work with. I mean, he's our old Campbell and I will say his son told me he said, out of all the things Earl has ever did, he's never been more in in days more positive about this one project. I mean, that's super exciting. We work with a lot of cool doctors, sciences, researchers, a lot of great people, a lot of great technology out here, and we're for bring it, take it to the market so that we can positively affect people lives in a positive world. When Baxter gets going talking about it, isn't husiasm is so great he can barely stop every day. I'm excited. I love it. I'm a science health and well on it and more importantly, we know what we're doing is he's going affects so many people alive, and it's in house people. So figures out my new college. A passionate about this check I was with the ball. The project. Rose Research Institute for Sports Science is growing rapidly, not unlike a young, healthy tree, developing more branches. A brain function study is in progress, as is a deep dive into the effects of ACL surgery. Baxter is always recruiting more investors. There are plans to open branches in Dallas, Houston and other parts of Texas. They're tinkering with how to use artificial intelligence. The longer we spoke, the more I had a question I was dying to ask. Finally I did the Gary Baxter that's in the Ravens locker room all right in two thousand and two, two thousand and three. If someone had, you know, come to you and said Gary, here's what you're going to be doing, what would have been your reaction. I wouldn't have believe them. I wouldn't believe them because I started working on this project since two thousand and six. So it's just a long time in order for us to get here. And it was it was a deal for me to where I knew I wanted to do something spression. I just didn't know exactly how I was going to do it. But this right here is it's amazing for me because the research that I made to do with it and the information that I'll be able to tell to other athletes when they're done. This is a place that you're going to want to come and go to because we're gonna understand your knees and what it is that that you're doing. And everyone is different, right, Everyone is different like DNA, And this is why it's so unique and book us because we're taking a lot of this a lot of our data and doing that the AI to that data, and I'm Gonnell with solutions. For the record, he isn't working twenty four seven on Project Rose. He still has his hand in the local commercial real estate world. He's also the secretary of the NFL Alumni chapter located in Dallas. This past summer, he was in Baltimore for a football clinic. He hasn't left football entirely behind. Baylor, His alma mater recently put him in its Athletic Hall of Fame, as did the school district in Tyler. Listen, if you live in Tyler, you have no choice but to follow the lions of John Tyler high. Whenever he sees Ozzie Newsom, the former Ravens general manager who drafted him to the NFL, they laugh about the time they negotiated a contract at McDonald's. But there's no doubt where his heart is now Project Rose and will not wake up in society because it's well, who am I meeting today? Where am I going to him? What we got on the attenda? And it's always exciting. I don't know. Life is good. It's a passion of mine. So I don't consider this work. I considered this doing something that I love to do. That's a passion of dealing with the high level professionals like that every day, the signs its researchers. I mean it is very fun for me, you know. I love thinking with the Scots, figuring out some of the weirdest, geekiest teams there is and just coming out with a solution we all celebrate. It's just amazing what my new celebration now. He is from being on a football field to when we discover something, it's just exciting. It carries the same way that value has been on the football field. Man, it's like intercepting the past and running back for touchdown. Right there. It is, right there, having fun every day. We like that I'm black, we're black, and our goal is to black other people. There you have it, Episode four of What Happened to That Guy? My thanks to Gary Baxter for carving out some time in his busy schedule to speak to me. You can find out more about him and his career at Baltimore Ravens dot com slash What Happened to That Guy? With this episode, we're halfway through the first season of the podcast. There's plenty more to come. A new episode will drop in two weeks, focusing on Matt Burke, the center on the Ravens twenty twelve Super Bowl team. In his post football life, He's gone down a road that I feel safe in saying this. Very few former NFL players have taken What Happened to That Guy? He's doing stand up comedy. New episodes on Interesting Former Ravens will continue to drop every other week for the rest of the twenty nineteen season. I hope you keep listening. If you like what you're hearing, don't hesitate to leave a five star rating and write a review. Also subscribe to it so you don't miss any episodes, and share it with friends. All that helps. This podcast and The Lounge, the excellent weekly podcast from my colleagues Rhyan Mink and Garrett Downing are part of the Baltimore Ravens Podcast Network. You can tell people just search for that wherever they get their podcasts, Baltimore Ravens Podcast Network and everything will come up. Missus, John Eisenberg, I'll talk to you in two weeks