TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6 27 players from both teams pushed through the mud, struggling for a win. Ultimately, a combination of short passes and trick plays devised by Chiefs head coach and offensive coordinator Hank Stram led the Chiefs to victory over the Vikings, 23-7. "That's it, boys! Yaaaa-ha! Haa-haa! Waahh!" Stram cheered fanatically after Chiefs wide receiver Otis Taylor scored the game-clinching touchdown. Stram and the rest of the players swarmed towards Taylor in celebration. But one football player—a young man who had an offer to play for the Chiefs—wasn't among them. Leland Winston was watching the game 380 miles away, drinking beer and eating hot dogs in Galveston, Texas. Dreams of his grandfather Leland Winston, M.D., grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas, a small community 57 miles south of Houston where there was "nothing but tiny little towns and woods all around." His grandfather often visited from North Carolina and took every opportunity to encourage young Winston to go into medicine. "He would come by and tell me at the age of five that I was going to be a doctor," said Winston, now 70. "I never had any other thought than 'I'm going to be a doctor. That's what I'm going to do.' It was nice grow- ing up knowing what I was going to do." Secretly, his grandfather had always aspired to be a doctor, as well, but was denied the opportunity by a wealthy aunt who urged him to become a Presbyterian minister. He eventually became a cowboy instead, but looked to Winston to fulfill his medical dream. Winston attended Rice University, where he met his wife Pam, and graduated in 1969 with a major in biology. While he excelled in academics, Winston was also a stellar athlete. He had played every sport imag- inable as a child, and in college, he was a track and field athlete and a two-time All-Southwest Conference lineman who caught the eye of the pros. Before he graduated, Winston was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs to play professional football. The team offered him $11,000 for the first year, an amount equivalent to nearly $80,000 today, but Winston was set on pursuing the dream he shared with his grand- father. He received his acceptance letter to medical school at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in time to decline the opportunity to play for the Chiefs. Winston still remembers his conversation with Coach Stram: "He said, 'Well, we're going to win the Super Bowl this year.' I said, 'Great. You do that.' And they did!" Still, Winston felt no pangs of regret. He was ready to close one chapter of his life and move onto the next. "When you play football in college, you're pretty much playing for your school—at least it was back then," Winston said. "Once you get to the professional level, it's different. It's a business, and I wasn't inter- ested in going into it. I just wanted to get on with what I wanted to do, which was to be a physician." Inspired by his own proclivity for breaking bones from all the sports he played, Winston pursued a career as an orthopedic surgeon. It was a specialty that didn't teeter on the edge of life and death, and married his two great loves: sports and medicine. "I like the fact that I can meet a patient, take care of their problems, use my hands to fix it, and they can come back to see me after they're well," he said. "I get a charge out of that." Part of the family Once Winston graduated from UTMB with his medi- cal degree, he moved back to Houston to complete his residency at The University of Texas Health Science Center and start his practice at Houston Methodist Hospital, both just half a mile down the road from Rice. Although he turned down his chance to join the NFL family, Winston found a different football family and a different Super Bowl stadium. In 1974, while he was a resident, Winston became a consulting physician for the athletics department at Rice under the supervision of Rice team physician, James Butler, M.D. That same year, the NFL hosted Super Bowl VIII at Rice Stadium, where the Minnesota Vikings lost—again—to the Miami Dolphins. "He's not just our team doctor, he's part of the fam- ily here," said David Bailiff, the current head football coach at Rice. "He's looking at these kids with these eyes like he's their dad, and you feel that spirit with him that he just cares so much for these players and coaches and this team." In 1990, Winston assumed the role of co-head team physician alongside his friend Tom Clanton, M.D., treating student athletes who are balancing school and sports. It's a juggling act he knows all too well from his days racing back and forth between the biology lab and the football field. "He knows what these players are going through academically and athletically, and he really relates well to them," Bailiff said. "He has an incredible manner about him where he can put them at ease and talk them through what's happening and what they have to do to get well. There's this trust and love that we all have in him." Winston treating a Rice University football player. Rice University football player Leland Winston, All-Southwest Conference Tackle, 1967. Credit: Rice Athletics

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