On the latest audio edition of “Listen In With KNN” sports talk podcast and radio show with award-winning host Kelsey Nicole Nelson, author and nonprofit organization president Martin McNair joined the show to bring awareness to the topics of safety, education and self-advocacy for student-athletes.
McNair’s life work can be characterized by taking action in the wake of a tragedy. His son, Jordan McNair, passed away in June 2018 after experiencing heatstroke during a team workout with the University of Maryland football team in College Park, Maryland. Jordan’s story is a familiar one to the DMV area, as the Randallstown native stayed local to pursue a collegiate football career as an offensive lineman at the University of Maryland. But despite his bright future, Jordan’s life was cut short at just 19-years-old by an unforeseen heat-related incident. This inspired his parents to create the Jordan McNair Foundation to prevent similar tragedies for other families.
“It was like, we had Door #1: do you go into that rabbit hole of depression and despair?” McNair remembered thinking after his son’s death. “Or, do you go in Door #2 and try to turn your pain into some type of purpose? And that, really, is what drove us.”
McNair proceeded to tell Nelson how he felt in the direct aftermath of Jordan’s passing. Naturally, he recalls the emotions of anger, powerlessness and confusion, and even failure at times. But, rather than letting these feelings consume him, McNair turned to action. He started to question what he could have done differently as a parent and how these insights could potentially help other families of student-athletes.
“I started to realize, wait a minute, all I ever did was sit in the stands as a passive onlooker. Nobody ever talked safety,” McNair noted. “So we wanted to kind of change the face of that.”
That’s exactly what McNair did. In June 2018, he and his wife created the Jordan McNair Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to educate student-athletes, parents and the football community on the signs and symptoms of heat-related illnesses. It works towards this goal through programs that support prevention through education, mobilizing medical and athletic resources and funding scholarships in Jordan’s memory. The foundation currently operates in Maryland and Georgia, with aspirations of expanding its services to more states.
“If we can get one state per year to plant a new flag in and make an impact in, I think that’s ideal for us,” McNair told Nelson. “Always educate more people every single year.”
Throughout the conversation, McNair took it upon himself to do some of that educating. He explained the difference between the surface-level understanding of heat stroke and the actual medical definition that not many people comprehend. While most people tend to think only of the preceding symptoms – nausea, dizziness and vomiting, for example – McNair found out the hard way that heat stroke is much more nuanced.
“When your core body temperature goes above 104 degrees, it’s the equivalent of your organs being in a microwave oven,” he clarified. “You literally have a 20- to 30-minute window to cool this person down.”
This preventative education is a key aspect of the Jordan McNair Foundation’s work during its peak season (March through September), spanning the suffocatingly hot and humid summer months when athletes are at the highest risk of experiencing heat-related illnesses. But in the colder months, McNair and his organization have still found ways to stay relevant to their audience and continue making an impact.
One way that the foundation does this is through their Keep On Believing in Yourself (K.O.B.Y.) Program, which utilizes education to help young student-athletes value themselves as whole human beings rather than just as athletes. The curriculum covers everything from self-advocacy, to mental health, to financial literacy.
McNair told Nelson that this program originated from reflections on his own parenting style after Jordan’s death. Now, he strives to prevent similar tragedies by visiting schools and teaching the K.O.B.Y. curriculum.
“I always ask, how many of you all really think you’re ready for the next level? And nobody’s hands go up,” said McNair as he demonstrated the critical need for this type of education. “Because it’s like, yeah, I might be ready academically, but am I ready emotionally, am I ready mentally…We’re preparing you for not only sports, but we’re preparing you for life.”
“We’re a sports society, Marty. Sports are so integrated and part of our lives, and football really being, probably, the mecca of sports in the U.S.,” Nelson added. “We have to remember these guys are still human beings and they matter…At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping them safe.”
The K.O.B.Y. program has even evolved into a podcast series, The K.O.B.Y. Blueprint Unleashed Podcast, with each episode covering a core lesson of the curriculum. Many of the featured guests are current collegiate athletes who have been in the same shoes as the young student-athletes who McNair hopes this information will reach.
“You’re hearing it from kids, collegiate athletes that are right there in that process. They can speak practically on this particular topic based off of their own experiences,” explained McNair. “So we keep it really eye-level, and that’s really the strength of the K.O.B.Y. curriculum.”
Before the discussion ended, the duo also mentioned McNair’s work as a writer. He already has one informational parenting book published (“Can My Child Play? The Questions We Should Have Asked”) and he told Nelson that he is currently working on another book titled “The Fifth Quarter.”
“It’s basically a how-to guide when it comes to recruitment, [and] how to make the right decisions,” McNair elaborated. “We need to be thinking about, how do we prepare them for life after sports?”
Under the guidance of Martin McNair, the Jordan McNair Foundation has led countless efforts to fill the gap in knowledge of heat-related illnesses. With its roots in Jordan’s local DMV community and dreams of expanding across the country, the Jordan McNair Foundation has ensured that kids are safe and prepared whenever they take the field.
Listen to the full episode below.
