Fred Mueller is not your casual weekend sports fan. The retired 74-year-old former professor from the University of North Carolina continues to run – almost singlehandedly – the National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research (NCCIR) at UNC, tracking, logging and analyzing catastrophic injuries in football and other sports.

Over a 30-year span, Mueller has analyzed more than 1,000 fatal, paralytic or otherwise severe injuries to young athletes, looking for and identifying patterns that result in rule or other changes that increase athlete safety.