It always seemed kind of absurd to know that these student athletes are no different than everyone's children.

Like they're no different.

They're no special or, you know, they're not unique in a lot of ways, but we kind of handle them differently.

Well, my approach was to not handle them differently.

I mean, if someone's got a drug issue, I want to talk about it.

If someone's got a, you know, STD, I want to talk about it.

I don't want to just ignore these things because these are kind of being human, you know, being human.

And I wanted to normalize it all.

And so all these issues just kind of combined over time into what we probably now call health and wellness

and creating a position for it that you can have

a group of individuals helping to mold the student athletes in ways that we just never thought

of outside of athletics I think is just a really unique perspective. Hey, fighting tigers, fight all the way.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to a bonus episode of Hey Fighten podcast, the official podcast of LSU football.

I'm Cody Wersham,

digital media reporter for LSU Athletics, and I'm excited today to be joined by

Shelley Mullinix, who if you followed LSU football for the last couple of decades,

you've probably seen Shelly on the field. She's been a trainer in the past for LSU.

She's been the director of wellness for the LSU

Athletic Department. And just this summer, she was promoted to senior associate athletic director

for health and wellness at LSU. It's a new role. It's an innovative role. It's a role that

Shelley, I think, is going to thrive in. She has a lot of big ideas, a lot of experience, working with athletes on all the things

...