Getting to know Randy Rhino: Hall of Famer turned team chiropractor -

Pop. Crack. Snap.

Every day, Randy Rhino hears the sounds. Back in the day, Rhino may have been the one to cause a few cracks of joints and bones on the football field. These days, however, the pops and snaps he creates are followed by a sigh of relief or a heightened sense that an injury is being prevented.

Many Yellow Jackets fans will remember Rhino’s name. From 1972 to 1974, Rhino became the first, and only, Georgia Tech football player to earn All-America status three years in a row. Rhino joined the program from Charlotte as a running back, but he made a name for himself at Georgia Tech as a defensive back and kick returner. (He was a pretty good baseball player for Georgia Tech at that time, too.) Rhino was drafted in 1975 by the New Orleans Saints but continued his football career in the Canadian Football League before retiring from football in 1981.

These days, Rhino, 65, can be found deep within the winding maze of Georgia Tech’s athletics building. Since 2002, Rhino has been Georgia Tech’s chiropractor, and for almost 20 years, Rhino has been working alongside Georgia Tech’s training staff as an important piece of sports medicine and therapy for the program’s student-athletes. For years, he has been helping athletes work through physical pain, along with stress and anxiety, while also working to lower the risk of certain injuries.

When it comes to sports medicine, many may think of the importance a nutritionist plays in the life of an athlete, or of trainers and therapists who are there to work with an athlete after an injury. But an important part of sports medicine is the inclusion of chiropractic care.

Georgia Tech just has a College Football Hall of Famer as its prime caregiver when it comes to the pop, snap and crack of athletes’ bodies — the good kind of pop, snap and crack, that is.

It’s funny how things work out

The week before Georgia Tech was set to play Duke in the fall of Rhino’s junior year, he awoke one morning with a major pain in his neck.

“I went to the training room, and I could barely even turn my head,” Rhino said.

While there, he ran into fellow defender Gary Carden, a senior. Rhino said the middle linebacker struggled with neck pain for much of his career. Carden told Rhino he knew of a chiropractor he could see.

“He’s a Tech guy,” Rhino recalled Carden saying. “He’ll see ya.”

So Rhino his neck pain to Dr. Forest Smith in Smyrna. Smith worked the crick out, and Rhino went on his way, back to the football field. Fast forward a full year later, and Rhino was hanging out with some fellow football players at a bar called the Mad Hatter in old Underground Atlanta. One of his teammates had brought a date, and Rhino, having a high school sweetheart at the time, was in charge of standing with his friend’s date while the friend went to grab a drink. You know, just to be a nice guy and look out for his friend’s girlfriend.

“You’re Randy Rhino, aren’t you?” the woman said to Rhino. “I have been wanting to meet you.”

The woman’s name was Missy, and it turns out, she was the daughter of chiropractor Forest Smith.

“Long story short, we fall in love, and I marry into a chiropractic family,” Rhino said with a laugh. “That’s kind of what started me off.”

Randy Rhino was a three-time All-American at Georgia Tech. (Georgia Tech Athletics)

But it wasn’t until Rhino’s time playing in the Canadian Football League was coming to an end that being a chiropractor turned into a real life plan. At first, Rhino considered going to dental school, but there were no schools that allowed him to continue playing football. Then he met with Sid Williams, a former Yellow Jackets player who founded Life Chiropractic College. Williams allowed Rhino to work toward his doctor-of-chiropractic degree while still playing football, picking up classes again in the offseason. By the time Rhino retired from football in 1981, he had just one year of school left.

After obtaining his degree, Rhino went into practice with his father-in-law, working with patients through much of the 1980s and 1990s. But as time wore on, Rhino tired of certain aspects of the medical field.

“I was kind of burning out in the healthcare profession,” he said. “I loved taking care of people, but I hated the business part of it.”

So, Rhino — with thoughts of maybe changing professions — called his old Georgia Tech position coach, David Braine, who was Georgia Tech’s athletics director at the time. Over lunch, Rhino asked Braine if there were any openings at Georgia Tech.

“I saw his mind working,” Rhino said. “Finally he said, ‘Well, how would you like to come down and be our team chiropractor?'”

At the time, Rhino said many athletes from different teams at Georgia Tech were seeking professional help from all over the city and that the training staff was having a hard time knowing where the athletes were going and who was actually treating them. To remedy the issue, Rhino closed his practice and became Georgia Tech’s chiropractor full time. To this day, Rhino believes he is the only full-time chiropractor on a college athletics department’s staff who has the capabilities to meet with athletes five days per week on campus. He says just about every major university has access to chiropractors and even has chiropractors who come to campus on a weekly basis, but Rhino is in-house and available for any weekly needs an athlete may have.

It’s a position Rhino has held with the coming and going of athletics directors and coaching staffs. And it’s a position he knows to hold value in the work he does with the athletes.

The importance of chiropractic care in sports medicine

Athletes who first see Rhino have a few misconceptions, he said.

One is that he is there just for recovery postgame. All of the work Rhino does is to help keep athletes from getting hurt in the first place, he said.

“People think that I do a lot of work after the game, but that’s not the case,” Rhino said. “I don’t do any work after the game. I do my work before the game as part of their preparation of making sure every joint in the body is moving, every joint in their spine is moving the way it should. It’s about working on the biomechanics.”

Rhino calls his work at Georgia Tech “just another bullet in the holster.” He works hand in hand with the team trainers and doctors to make sure that while the risk of injury always will be there, the chances that an athlete will be hurt — whether initially or by the aggravation of an existing injury — are reduced.

Rhino’s job is also about a lot more than just cracking a few bones.

“I think the biggest misconception is that people will come in and ask, ‘Can you pop my spine?’ and they think that all I do is manipulate their neck or their back to get as many pops as I can out of it,” Rhino said. “That’s so far from the truth. I do a lot of soft-tissue work, decompression work.”

Rhino even works to help combat stress and anxiety in some of the athletes he sees. One of his favorite stories is about a track-and-field athlete who came to him after one of her first meets as a freshman. She was so nervous before the meet that she threw up, and her coaches wouldn’t let her run. Through the stimulation of certain parts of her head through acupressure exercises that Rhino taught her before her next meet, she was able to come in for another session afterward with a “big grin on her face.”

“Who knows whether those spots really did anything for her, but it gave her something. She had something that she could do,” Rhino said. “Stuff like that makes it worth it.”

Rhino’s office is situated in a small corner deep within the athletics building. And though it is an office and workspace, it seems altogether homey.

Inside his office, the lights are turned down low to make for a relaxing ambiance. Countless photos and notes line the walls, each depicting an athlete Rhino has helped.

And yet, he doesn’t just work with athletes. Professors, faculty members, staff members and coaches, too, can go to Rhino for their chiropractic care. He explained that so many times through the years athletes would come to see him — for whatever reason — toward the end of their senior year and be sick to their stomach knowing they didn’t take advantage of Rhino’s expertise during their entire tenure.

It isn’t just his expertise in the art of chiropractic care that these folks take advantage of. Rhino helps them work through things. Georgia Tech’s football program is undergoing a major change with Geoff Collins taking over for Paul Johnson. That’s something Rhino knows well, having played for three head coaches during his years at Georgia Tech as an athlete and having worked with dozens more as a chiropractor.

Whether it’s a quick adjustment there or a stress-relief talk here, Rhino is at Georgia Tech to make people feel better. People want to feel good about their bodies and how they are working. Rhino, who arrived at Georgia Tech ready to rattle a few bones and joints on the football field, is now in the position as Georgia Tech’s chiropractor to help people reach those health goals. Chiropractic care is his tool.

“It’s no different than a car,” Rhino said. “Athletes just want to know that everything is working the way it should.”

(Top photo of Randy Rhino: Georgia Tech Athletics)

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