Joey T\'s DHPF of the Month

Name: Justin Sipla

Currently resides in: Coralville, Iowa

Q: What city/state were you born and raised?

A: Born in Thousand Oaks, CA, raised in nearby Newbury Park and elsewhere in Southern California.

Q: You’re currently a professor teaching neuroscience at the University of Iowa. What drove you to that profession and what exactly does it consist of?

A: I’ve had several careers in my lifetime. Out of high school, I wanted to be musician. I convinced my mom to empty my college fund for guitar equipment and pursued that pretty aggressively. I still play guitar regularly today, but I moved on to filmmaking in my early twenties and worked for years in Arizona and Hollywood trying to make it as a camera operator. Eventually, that dried up and I enrolled in a community college in Moorpark, California, not really knowing what to study. I thought I might be an English major, but took a few classes in Anthropology and decided to go all-in for paleoanthropology (human evolutionary studies).

Went to UCLA for undergrad in Anthropology and Stony Brook University in New York for PhD in Anatomical Sciences. Stony Brook was at the top of my list for grad school. I was privileged to work there with some exceptional mentors, among the very best in their fields. I went from studying kinematics of monkey locomotion to comparative anatomy of the inner ear in dinosaurs. Had to teach myself some neuroscience to get anywhere with that, and just kept going. Got my first job at University of Texas at El Paso (go Miners!) teaching human anatomy and neuroscience in an allied health program targeted to Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy students, and four years later took my current job at University of Iowa (on Iowa!).

A few years into my time at Iowa, the medical school hired me to help redesign and direct courses in a new medical curriculum, so today I’m a course director in our medical school, teaching neuro to everyone from med students to physician assistants, PTs, and students across a range of PhD programs. I’m cross-appointed in our Dept. of Neurology and frequently teach neuroanatomy in their clinical clerkships and residency programs. So, I teach neuroscience around here.

What does that consist of? In short: I teach our students and residents how the brain is organized, how it works to sense the universe and bring about behavior, and how the mechanisms supporting these functions are related to health and disease. It’s the best job in the world. The science changes so rapidly, every year there are major breakthroughs requiring new approaches to teaching. I’m really proud of the culture of neuroscience education we’ve created at Iowa and love being a part of it.

Q: You’ve been involved in research investigating neurocognitive dysfunction in human athletes suffering from traumatic brain injury. Since the highest incidence of repetitive play-related head injuries occurs in American Football, do you believe the NFL’s talent pipeline (and fan reservoir) could eventually dry up because of the reports being published on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)?

A: That’s certainly a possibility, and of course nothing lasts forever. Concussion activism has come a long way in the past ten years, though. In the NFL, we now have strict protocols in place, enforced by independent neurologists in the stadium. When a player enters concussion protocol, they can’t return to play until they clear it, a process that involves (among other things) passing a battery of neurocognitive tests over a period that can last days or weeks, depending on the severity. College football is approaching this level of monitoring, but the real focus needs to be at the high school level or sooner, where concussion protocols are less stringently emplaced or enforced. A major issue with repetitive head trauma at the highest level of the sport is that we really don’t know how many concussions an athlete has sustained before they got there.

I think we’ll be playing and watching football for years to come, but the rules, equipment, and concussion management protocols at every level are going to have to continue to improve, injuries need to go down, and we’re going to have to see measurable outcomes for successfully mitigating CTE. Educating high school coaches and parents about the importance of modern concussion management is a major step.

Q: When did you and your wife become such parrot enthusiasts? Tell us a little bit about your flock. Also, when did you start working with the Iowa Parrot Rescue?

A: I’m allergic to cats and dogs. We wanted pets anyway and four years ago decided to bring home a pair of budgies, Chester A. Arthur and Mr. Beak. We soon discovered that little parrots are gateway drugs to bigger parrots, and before long we had rescued two conures (Hamish and Buddy), an orange-wing Amazon (Beeber), and two big macaws (Skylar and Caribe). Our house can sound like a rainforest at times, but it’s music to our ears.

Almost from the beginning, we were supporters of the Iowa Parrot Rescue in Letts, Iowa (http://mikeoso.homestead.com/rescue.html). Several of our birds were adopted from there. These are long-lived, highly intelligent animals who, through no fault of their own, often find themselves in dire need of relocation and rehabilitation. We wanted to help. Before long, my wife and I were volunteering at the Rescue and developing friendships with the people running it. Earlier this year, they invited me to join the Board of Directors. Parrot activism has become a major source of joy in our lives.

Q:  You are also quite the “caver,” a sport that is not for the claustrophobic.  What has been your most challenging cave?

A:  I dropped a 251 ft. pit in Putnam County, Tennessee, called Ferris Pit. That was the most challenging vertical cave so far (imagine rappelling down and then frogging back up a rope, free-hanging into a pit 25 stories deep). The most challenging horizontal cave I’ve been in was also in Tennessee, a 460 ft. deep multi-drop cave called Grunge Plunge. There were a number of awkward drops requiring vertical ropework, and the entire cave was made up of scary slanted breakdown rooms, slimed over with thick, slippery mud, with a number of super-tight crawls. That’s the only place (so far!) I’ve ever gotten stuck and had to work through the mind games that come with getting unstuck. I couldn’t reach the bottom at the time, but I’d like to try that one again someday.

Q: Did your caving hobby lead you into Paleontology?  Are you an Invertebrate Paleontologist, Vertebrate Paleontologist or Human Paleontologist?

A: The other way around. A bunch of paleontologists in Iowa City meet regularly for happy hour at a bar downtown called Joe’s Place. There I met Julie Meachen, who promptly invited me to join her excavation of the Natural Trap Cave site in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, a project we worked on together for four years. Had to learn vertical caving to participate. Caught the bug right away and morphed into a caver. Now I enjoy caving anywhere I can get the opportunity. Looking forward to getting back into some big cave systems with friends in the Black Hills of South Dakota next summer. My next goal is to learn more about modern cave surveying techniques and be more active in mapping caves.

As for fossils, I’m mainly what you’d call a vertebrate paleontologist. I was originally trained as a human paleontologist (paleoanthropologist) and had the opportunity as an undergrad at UCLA to participate in some excavations in the Rift Valley region of East Africa. During grad school, I became interested in dinosaur evolution. Today, I still work on the evolution and functional anatomy of the dinosaurian brain and inner ear, especially as it pertains to the evolution of flight in birds, so I guess you’d call me a “paleoneuroanatomist.” I spend a lot of time CT scanning and reconstructing the brains of fossil dinosaurs and living birds, and from that data inferring details about their locomotor behavior, posture, and other aspects of their biology. Getting to play with dinosaurs as a grown man is a big plus.

Q.  You travel five hours to attend every home game in Green Bay. What drove you to become such an avid tailgater in Lot 1? 

A: I took my job in Iowa, in part, because it was within driving distance of Green Bay. Before that, I was living in El Paso (a bit further away!). When I first heard about the opportunity to come to Iowa, I wasn’t exactly sure where the University of Iowa was on a map. Google Maps drew me a quick line from Iowa City to Green Bay and the rest is history. Since 2011, I’ve only missed two home games due to suffering a small stroke in 2016. I’m kind of an “all-in or not at all” kind of guy. For Lot 1, I’m all-in.

My brother took me to Lambeau Field in 2008 for the first time, while I was still living in Texas. The following year, I went back with my friends Arlene and Vanessa, who insisted on tailgating in one of the parking lots adjacent to the stadium. Completely by chance, we lined up to go into Lot 1 (not having a parking pass or any clue what we were doing) and met Scott Schwartz (DHPF #7). Scott and I became fast friends, then best friends, now brothers. One thing led to another and here we are, almost a decade later, still tailgating every game together and preaching Tim at the base of the Oneida Nation Gate steps.

Once you experience the camaraderie and unbridled fun of a Lot 1 tailgate, you’ll want to come every week too.

Q. Tell us about your Lot 1 Family and how that evolved?

A: Scotty has been tailgating in Lot 1 long before it was called that, going back more than 25 years. When I started coming to the party, there were several families already knit together by virtue of where they liked to park their trucks in the lot: Scott Schwartz (DHPF #7) and his extended group of regulars (the Phan-atics), Reyne Kasieta (DHPF #23) and her daughter Jenny (DHPF #2), and Gary Platt (DHPF #11) w/Kathy Sacotte, and many others. I’m a sucker for a good tradition. In those days, I took a lot of photographs during the tailgate. When you take pictures of the same people regularly, you start to really appreciate their customs, their rituals, all the things that go into making this the greatest tradition in professional sports for them. I fell in love with the whole affair from the beginning. Eventually it hit me: this is like Thanksgiving every week with cherished family and live Packer football. How can you beat that?

Today, it’s like any other family. We attend each other’s weddings and funerals, we celebrate birthday parties and Christmas, we travel to Canton together for Packers inductions. We kick in, we help out. I’d give these people my organs if they needed them. How did that evolve? Genuine love of tailgating, of the Packers, of each other. Pretty simple, really: love each other and good things will happen. When we all come together on Sunday, we’re participating in a tradition that goes back a long, long time in Green Bay. It’s special to be a part of that, to help shape it, to watch it evolve before our eyes.

I could share with you all the details of a Lot 1 party, but I’d rather just invite you and show you in person. We’ll preach some Tim, lift a few shotskies, and have a great time, rain or shine, in the shadow beneath Lambeau Field.

Q. What is your best moment with another Packer fan or player? Any good stories?

A: Steve Tate (DHPF #10) and I ended up at a private party in Dallas during the 2013 season (the Matt Flynn comeback game) where I met Hall of Famer Dave Robinson. We spent an afternoon reflecting on his career with Lombardi’s Packers while looking over a fan’s collection of memorabilia. At one point, he withdrew a team-signed Super Bowl II ball from a case and pointed to his own signature. He let me wear his I and II rings, and his newly minted HOF ring. Later, we found ourselves sitting on a sideline bench taken from Lambeau Field in the Sixties, and there was a picture on the wall behind us of Dave sitting besides Ray Nitschke on the very same bench. As a fan of the culture and history of the Green Bay Packers and their traditions, that was surreal. Dave and I have reunited at various functions in Green Bay several times since.

My dad came to Lambeau Field in 2011. He cried the second he set foot in the old Hall of Fame. That was a special moment. To this day, he tells everyone about the generosity and good nature the fans of Green Bay showed toward each other and visiting fans. That reputation is sacred to me.    

Q. Do you have a particular Packer item or garment that you wear frequently?

A: Scott and I both wear field-worn jerseys at the tailgate. He’s #74, I’m #73. We’d really like to get a field-worn #75 for Reyne. In this offensive line, Scott is definitely the Center.

Q: What would be your most valuable Packer memorabilia piece?  (non-monetarial)

A: I don’t collect Packers memorabilia, though during my first-ever trip to Lambeau in 2008, Aaron Rodgers signed my helmet and chatted with us in the parking lot. I still keep that helmet around. My favorite pieces are the many pictures of us tailgating, hanging from the walls of my office, and of course my share of Packers stock.

Q:  Who is your all time favorite player and who is your favorite player now and why?

A: All-time: Dave Robinson. Today: Aaron Rodgers. He’s simply the best to have ever played the position. Give him a top-10 defense and he’d have as many rings as any QB you like.

Q: Do you have any game day rituals/superstitions?

A: Scott and I recite “Tim the Diehard Packer Fan” from the tailgate of his truck a few times every game. Apart from that, lots of little ones that go into pulling this tailgate off every week, too numerous (or secret!) to iterate.

Q: Any last words you\’d like to say to the Packer Nation?

A: There are a lot of forces trying to tear us apart as a nation right now, but none of that seems to matter to anyone at 1265 Lombardi Ave. on game day. If we can figure it out on Sundays, we can figure it out the rest of the week, I like to think. If you’ve never tailgated in Lot 1, or if it’s your hundredth time, come be our guest, and GO PACK GO!

Justin Sipla Gallery