A medical doctor, Cade was a nephrologist (kidney specialist) and an assistant professor at the medical college at the University of Florida. He was also the team physician for the school’s football team, the Gators. He noticed that the team often got quite dehydrated when playing in the oppressive Florida heat, so he came up with a way to help them not only keep hydrated, but also replace the carbohydrates they burned and the electrolytes they sweated out.
The result, which he mixed up in his basement, was dubbed “Cade’s Cola”, but someone else suggested “Gatorade”. The drink was first used in October 1965, during a game against Louisiana State University in 102-degree heat; the Gators easily beat the parched LSU Tigers. Cade offered his patent rights to the university, but it wasn’t interested in marketing the drink, so in 1967 Cade licensed the recipe to Stokely-Van Camp. Once his royalties passed $200,000, the university “told me it belonged to them and all the royalties were theirs,” Cade said. “I told them to go to hell. So they sued.”
After a 3-year battle, Cade and the university settled, with the university getting 20 percent and a trust getting 80 percent. Cade set up scholarships and even donated some of his royalties back to the university, which has received some $150 million from its share. “It’s the feeling that I’ve made the world a better place to live,” Cade said in 2006 of his invention. “Pediatricians rely on the drink when they work with patients, and people in Third World countries who suffer from cholera have a heavy reliance on Gatorade. That’s the best part.”
Gatorade went on to spawn the “sports drink” category, which now brings in $19 billion in annual sales. Dr. Cade died November 27, just 11 days after attending the dedication of a historical marker at the university, which proclaimed it “Gatorade’s Birthplace … the sports drink that started an industry.” He was 80.