Featured Interview: Robert Cade
Audio Files
- UFHC-25A (mp3) - Transcript
- UFHC-25B (mp3) - Transcript
- UFHC-25C (mp3) - Transcript
- UFHC-25D (mp3) - Transcript
- UFHC-25E (mp3) - Transcript
- UFHC-25Z (mp3) - Transcript
UFHC25-A, corresponds to UFHC-25A(mp3)
C: Again, one of the reasons I have respect for coach Graves was that when we explained to him what we had found, he professed no ability to really understand what we were saying, but he accepted it, and hedged his bets a little bit. We could try it on the freshman team. They had a game they called the Toilet Bowl, between the freshman and the B team, on a Friday afternoon. We could give it to the freshman for that game, but we were not to give it to Larry Rentz or Larry Smith because they were his coming stars.
P: So to begin with, he gave you permission to do testing on the players after the game. Now he broadened it, to allow you to give freshmen this solution to drink during the game.
C: A solution to the problem. So we did that. Graves and the entire bunch of them were out there watching.
P: Have you a date on all of this?
C: That was early October 1965. They were playing at LSU [Louisiana State University, at Baton Rouge] the next day. It was the LSU game in early October 1965.
P: So you fed your concoction to this freshmen group in a Friday afternoon game.
C: Yes.
P: What did you find out at the end of it? Were they renewed?
C: What happened was at the end of the first half, the B team was ahead thirteen to nothing. They pushed the freshmen around pretty good. In the third period, the freshmen came out. They were pushing the B team around. They scored two or three touchdowns in the third period. In the fourth period, they scored five or six more. The B team did not even make a first down during the fourth period. At the end of the game, Larry Rentz was kicking the football and yelling, boy this is fun! Let us play another quarter. Two of the B team guys who were dragging by at that point said, "Oh, go to hell," and continued plodding over to the gym to shower.
P: Nobody unfurled a big banner saying, 'Long live Dr. Cade!'
C: No. Graves came up and said he was really impressed. When I had told him we could probably give him a better team during the fourth quarter and we had surely done that.
P: He liked that.
C: Oh yes. He asked, can you make it up for the varsity to use against LSU? I said sure.
P: You got your kettle out?
C: We went down to the lab. I had plenty of salt and water. We were putting phosphate in it because it helps.
P: Did you already figure out what the proportions were of sugar, salt, and all of these other things?
C: Yes, so that one would get rapid absorption and so on.
P: Did you use it Saturday against LSU?
C: Yes, although we ran into a problem. When we got to the lab, we [found] that I only had one bottle, 500 grams, of glucose. It was reagent grane glucose at about $5 a pound. We needed about five kilos [kilograms] to make up 100 liters which was what we planned for the team. I called the pharmacy and hospital stores; they did not have any glucose. I called a pharmacy warehouse over in Jacksonville; they did not have any. Dwayne Douglas came walking by, and he said, I have a key that will open every lab in the building. So we went up to the fifth floor, and walked into Mel Fregly's lab. I think I got four bottles out of there. Wendell Stainsby's lab right next door had five or six more. Sidney Cassin's lab had some more.
P: I hope you left an IOU in all of these places?
C: No, I did not. We got all the glucose we needed, went down, and made up our stuff. We put it in a walk-in freezer to get cold overnight. The next day, we had it in two big carboys. We had 100 liters of it in these carboys. I had them in a little red wagon and was walking across the field where the Gators bench would be. The public address guy came on and said, it is 104 degrees on the playing surface today. Because of the heat we expect to have nine or ten people with heat exhaustion or stroke in the stands. The football players are not going to be affected because they will be taking...and I thought damn, who told them?...salt tablets, said the announcer. Taking salt tablets would be just the wrong thing to do because your sodium was already way up. That would just run it up more and compound the problem. I relaxed then.
I got over to our bench. They kicked off to LSU. The defensive team went in. They finally stopped LSU at about the twenty yard line. The defense came out. The first three guys on the bench were Bennett, a safety man; Benson, a tackle; and Larry Gagner, a guard. They sat down and the rest of the defense was sitting there. I handed a cup of the stuff to Benson, and he said, what is this? I told him, this is a glucose electrolyte solution. It will replace [the water, salt, and sugar he was losing because of the heat]. Not only would he keep his energy during the game, but if he kept drinking it throughout the game, at the end he would feel better and be stronger. He took it and just gluggled it all down, and wanted another cup. The next guy was Gagner, and I handed him a cup. He sort of sipped it. He said, this stuff tastes like piss. He poured it on his head because it was cold, and that would cool him off, which was one of the things we wanted. I handed a cup to Bennett who was right next to Gagner. He took it and sipped it. He said, Larry, it does not taste like piss to me. He glugged it down. Each time I came around during the first half, Gagner would take his and pour it on his head. The other guys would drink it and comment on how good it was. I could not get into the argument at that time because I had never tasted piss. Toward the end of the first half, Gagner took his cup and drank it down. He said, Doc, I have decided I like the taste of piss. He drank a couple of cups every time he came out after that for the rest of the game.
In that game, at the half, LSU was ahead thirteen to nothing. They outgamed the Gators about 200 yards to 50 yards. In the third period, the Gators stopped them, and scored a touchdown late in the third period. It was thirteen to seven. Then in the fourth period, the Gators were really dominating play, but they had not scored until about halfway through the fourth period. They had a tackle whose name I do not remember, but I know they threw a pass to him and he went in for a touchdown. The Gators won that game fourteen to thirteen. In the second half they outgamed LSU by more than LSU had outgamed them in the first half. It was something like 250 or 260 yards that they gained in the second half. I think LSU made one first down and that was all. Graves was again very impressed. After that, they started using Gatorade in all of the games.
P: I must say that I only drank the mixture one time in my life, very early on. It did taste terrible, absolutely terrible. I have never had any since. I guess that was before all of these other mixtures were added. I have never tasted piss, but I think that was the way I would have described it at the time. Did you think it had sort of a nauseating tasting to start with?
C: I did not think the first batches tasted good. But by the end of the second year, the stuff we were making tasted pretty good.
P: You doctored it up doctor.
UFHC25-B, corresponds to soundbite UFHC-25B(mp3)
C: [Yes, it did.= is omitted in the sound bite] We were getting inquiries from all kinds of people. There was a boxer, Jerry Quarry, who was rated third or fourth in the world. He would try to knock his opponent out in the first four rounds. If his opponent got past the fourth round, he would frequently knock out Jerry Quarry, in the eighth round or so, when Jerry ran out of gas. We sent it to him. He started drinking it between rounds. His whole career turned around.
P: Was it not necessary to get a patent for this?
C: We applied for a trademark on Gatorade. When we sold it to [Alfred J.] Stokely [chief executive officer of Stokely-Van Camp, Inc.], they applied for a patent. That was over a year later [in 1967].
P: Now you use the pronoun "we."
C: I had three research fellows who had taken part in the experiment. In addition, my secretary at that time, and Kelly, one of my lab technicians [took part in the experiment]. When we started selling Gatorade, we set up "Gatorade, Inc.," a corporation. They all had shares of stock in that. When we sold it to Stokely, we set up the Gatorade Trust for all of the people who had contributed to it, technicians, fellows, secretaries, and so on.
P: Was there a large number of people?
C: There were about ten in all.
P: Dwayne Douglas was not involved in any of this?
C: No, I forgot to do it, and I still feel guilty about that. Anyway, everyone in the lab shared in it.
UFHC25-C, corresponds to UFHC-25C(mp3)
P: Did any of them try to steal the formula from you and manufacture it on their own?
C: Yes. Not at first, but later. For example, the [University of] Georgia people came down, got some, and took it back to Athens [Georgia]. They had their biochemistry people see what was in it. They started making it and called it Bulldog Punch.
P: Bulldog Punch? [Laughter]
UFHC25-D, corresponds to UFHC-25D(mp3)
C: [Yes. =this is omitted in the soundbite] Florida State made some that way and called it Seminolade. [Laughter] The Houston professional football team called, and I sent them several gallons of it to try out. They measured it and started making it, and called it either Half Time Punch or Quick Kick, I do not quite remember. They started making it for their own use and tried to sell it on the market. There were five or six occurrences like that.
UFHC25-E, corresponds to UFHC-25E(mp3)
C: Yes. At the end of the first year, the last game was with Miami and it was played here. After the game, a reporter for The Miami Herald, Neal Amdur, went down to the field. The Gators had won in a big fourth quarter surge. At that time, Dr. [Everett Lincoln] Fouts [professor of Dairy Science and head the department and of the Agricultural Extension Stations] was putting it up in milk cartons for us at the Dairy Science lab. Neal Amdur walked over and asked coach Graves if the team was drinking milk during the game. Graves told him no, this was Gatorade. He could not tell Amdur much about it, but told him to call Dr. Cade. Graves did tell him that he thought the team did a lot better drinking it and so on. Neal Amdur called me at home and wanted to come by and talk to me about it. I called Graves to ask him if he had any objection to that. He said to go ahead. Amdur then wrote an article about Gatorade that appeared in The Miami Herald the next day. The story got on the AP [Associated Press] and UP [United Press] news services, and ran basically in every newspaper in the country.
P: By this time now, it had this identifying name, Gatorade?
UFHC25-Z, corresponds to UFHC-25Z(mp3)
P: In other words, after this first game against LSU where it was effective, Ray Graves said, make some more. I am going to use it for every game now.
C: And they did. That same pattern occurred over and over. There were some games where they just ran the other team off the field in the first half. They were clearly a lot better.
P: May I ask why we did not win the Southeastern Conference Championship back in those early years and why we had to wait? We could have given complete credit to Gatorade. It did not have a name or anything yet at that time.
C: It did not have a name yet. That came about a month later. One of my fellows, [Harry J.] Jim Free [assistant in medicine] came back from a weekend at home and said, why do we not call it 'Gatorade?' That sounded great.
P: Of course. Was the "-ade" for Cade?
C: It was "-ade" like in "lemonade." We debated that. We thought we would make it "-aid." But if we did that, we were afraid the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] would say this was therapeutic and we had to have clinical tests on one million people.
P: The "-ade" gives you credit also, so it worked out beautifully. So the first year, 1965, it was just for the Florida Gators.
Photos are courtesy Gainesville Sun and UF Special Collections Archive.
