How does one get elected into the National Football Foundation's Leadership Hall of Fame despite not even playing a full season of high school football? All Dr. Kenneth Cooper had to do was change the way the entire world saw exercise.

The "Father of Aerobics" will be honored today at the Omni Hotel in Dallas as part of the kickoff for the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship weekend.

Cooper, 83, is a world-renowned physician specializing in the field of preventative medicine. His 1968 book Aerobics introduced the idea of exercise and physical fitness as a way to prolong life and prevent disease and eventually led to his word "aerobics" becoming synonymous with exercise. In fact, after helping the 1970 World Cup-winning Brazilian soccer team become the best-conditioned team in the world, the word for jogging in Brazil is "coopering".

Cooper was a track star at the University of Oklahoma and a good basketball player for Putnam City High School in Oklahoma City, but his football career wasn't a very long one. Back then, it was thought that too much exercise would cause someone to have an "athletic heart" and would lead to heart attacks early in life. Cooper's father told him to concentrate on just two sports instead of three, so his career as a left end was over before his sophomore season finished.

This theory that too much exercise was bad for health is one that Cooper has spent his life disproving. He founded the Cooper Clinic and Institute in 1970 to promote wellness and preventative medicine.

"When I started the clinic here in Dallas in 1970 they tried to run me out of town because exercise was supposedly dangerous," Cooper says.

While Cooper's effect on the overall health of the world may be incalculable, his effect on the sport of football is easy to spot. The best football teams are often the teams in the best condition, but before Cooper became involved with the Green Bay Packers in 1966, and later the Dallas Cowboys in the 70s, this wasn't necessarily the case.

"Football is primarily in 15-second spurts, so the Packers players told me that they didn't need to be cross country runners. But I said they needed to be aerobically conditioned first," Cooper says.

Cooper ran a series of tests on the Packers' best players to see how well-conditioned they were. What he found was that after a few sprints their resting heart rates were as high as their heart rates were during their first sprints, meaning that they were not in good aerobic shape.

A modern-day football player who is in bad shape would be on the bench, or worse, cut from the team. But in 1966 these were the best players on the team.  The Packers took his lessons to heart and would go on to win the Super Bowl in 1966 and 1967.

Cooper also began working with the Nebraska Cornhusker football team around the same time. They would win the National Championship in 1970 and 1971.

When he moved to Dallas in 1970, he became involved with Cowboys head coach Tom Landry and quarterback Roger Staubach. Cooper worked to get his "Cooper Test" into regular use in the NFL. For football purposes, the Cooper Test requires a lineman to run a mile and a half in 12 minutes and other positions to run a mile and three quarters in 12 minutes. The Cowboys won the Super Bowl in 1971.

"It may have been one of the reasons the Cowboys had such great success during that time, because they were in such great condition," Cooper says.

In a span of 5 years, Cooper's techniques had helped win three Super Bowls, two NCAA Division I football Championships, and the 1970 World Cup. It's fair to say that Cooper was on to something with his emphasis on aerobic condition.

Cooper's main focus now is on changing the "deplorable" state of American fitness. He focuses mostly on the youth and he says he's almost given up on adults. The way he wants to change that is making sure that Physical Education is put back into schools after being removed from many. He also stresses the importance of playing team sports like football.

"Having competition, having camaraderie with someone else is a tremendous motivator to keep doing something. Many people exercise alone and don't keep it up," Cooper says.

Vince Lombardi famously said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." Cooper uses this phrase often when referring to the importance of conditioning in football and life. He points to football as a sport that has specific benefits to anyone who plays it.

"The benefits from a conditioning and future health standpoint far outweigh the potential issues with playing football as long as you continue staying in shape," Cooper says.

Many former football players struggle with their health after they are done playing, which is something that Cooper is working to change. He believes strongly in a deconditioning program that would help promote better quality of life of players who don't know how to lose the weight that was so necessary to gain for football.

"Fitness is a journey, not a destination," Cooper says. "It matters more what you did yesterday than what you did six months ago."

 At 83, Cooper still walks two miles a day and works 60 hours a week. He's had to listen to his body as he's gotten older and change some routines, but he continues to stay active and sharp both mentally and physically. His long list of success stories, including his own incredible health at his age shows that he's the man to listen to when it comes to wellness.