60 Minutes - 9/13/2015: Iraq's Christians, The Shooting at Chardon High, King of CrossFit

Episode Date: September 13, 2015

Lara Logan reports on the persecution of Iraq's Christians by ISIS; then, Ohio HS coach Frank Hall talks with Scott Pelley about the school shooting he helped stop; and, meet the former gymnast who created the popular CrossFit workout. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Archbishop Nicodemus Sharaf says he had five minutes to flee from Iraq's second largest city, Mosul. He grabbed five ancient manuscripts from his church, but had to leave other relics behind. You had books from the first century. Of the Christianity. We need to make a stand right now that our schools need to be the most important thing we have in this country. Not Wall Street, not Capitol Hill, our schools. Frank Hall doesn't want to be known as a hero. But when you react the way he did during a deadly school shooting, it's hard to call him anything else.

I saw a young man firing into a crowd. I just stood up, shoved my table out of the way, and started after him. The emergency plan is to get all the kids out of the hallways, get them all into rooms and shelter in place. Frank didn't do that. He didn't. He acted as a father. Greg Glassman hardly looks like an exercise guru. There's no hint of ripped muscle

underneath his untouched shirt, but he is widely considered the most powerful man in fitness today. If you like metrics, you like money, we're the fastest growing large chain on earth. We have broken all records. In just 15 years, the king of CrossFit has created the largest gym chain in history. She was meant to look like that. That's what nature would have carved from her a million years ago. Or she'd have been eaten. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Laura Logan. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. There are places on earth where Christianity is as old as it is in Iraq. Christians there trace their history to the first century apostles. But today, their existence has been threatened

by the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State. More than 125,000 Christians, men, women, and children, have been forced from their homes over the past year. The Islamic State, or ISIS, stormed into Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, just over a year ago and took control. From there, ited into Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, just over a year ago and took control. From there it pushed into the neighboring villages and towns across this region, known as the Nineveh Plains, a vast area that's been home to Christians since the first century

after Christ. As we first reported in March, much of what took almost 2,000 years to build was lost in a matter of months. On the side of a mountain overlooking the Nineveh plains of ancient Mesopotamia is the monastery of St. Matthew. It's one of the oldest on earth. The voices of its monks have echoed here since the 4th century, uttering prayers that have not changed. You do the service in Aramaic, which was the language of Jesus. Yes. Are you among the last people on earth to speak this language? We think so, because we kept this language through the language of prayers. Prayers through centuries of persecution. Father Yusuf Ibrahim is one of

only seven monks left here. He told us the monastery was founded in 363 and has survived the Persian and Ottoman empires, Mongol invaders and Kurdish conquests. Today it's threatened by the Islamic State, whose fighters advanced towards St. Matthew's Gates shortly after taking Mosul last summer. Kurdish soldiers pushed them back to this village, where their flag still flies only four miles from the monastery.

What are you most afraid of? Unknown future. Unknown future? Yes. What do you think is going to happen? We don't know exactly, but we're expecting the worst. The road from St. Matthews brings you to the front line, just six miles from the outskirts of Mosul.

Every town and village between here and the occupied city is in the hands of the Islamic State. And now, we're told, for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, there are no Christians left inside Mosul. They take everything from us, but they cannot take the God from our hearts. They cannot. Nicodemus Sharaf is the archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Mosul, one of about 10,000 Christians who fled the city. We found him

living as a refugee in the Kurdish capital Erbil. He said ISIS fighters were already inside Mosul when he escaped. I don't have any time to take anything. He told me, you have just five minutes. Just I take it, five books, they are very old. Among them, this Aramaic manuscript. He told us it was written 500 years ago and said he left behind hundreds more, older than this one, Christian relics that may never be recovered. I think they burn all the books. And we have books from the first century of the Christianity. You had books from the first century of the Christianity. When I remember this,

I cannot do it. From the beginning, the Christianity, this is the first time we cannot pray in our churches. As it seeks to erase Christianity from the landscape, the Islamic State allows no Christian symbols. It released these photographs, which show the desecration of the church at what is believed to be the monastery of Margorgis, just north of Mosul. And nothing is sacred. ISIS blew up this mosque shortly after taking control here. It's a site holy to both Christians and Muslims

because the Old Testament prophet Jonah was said to be buried inside. Just like the Nazis marked the property of Jews, Christian homes in Mosul have been marked with this red symbol. It's the Arabic letter N for Nisara, an early Islamic term for Christians. When ISIS puts it on your home, you either convert to Islam, pay an extortion tax, or face the sword. Issa al-Kareem is one of tens of thousands who had to make that choice. He was at home with his family in the Christian village where he'd lived all his life, when ISIS fighters came looking for him. He told us the fighters first took all his money, then his wife and children.

So they were telling you, convert, convert, convert? Yes, convert. In the beginning, I refused. I told them I was Christian, and I had my religion, and they had their religion. But they told me, if you don't convert, we will kill you and take your wife and children. He agreed and was taken to Mosul to convert, where he was reunited with his family. Soon, ISIS fighters were asking about his young daughter, and he told us that frightened him more than anything. They said to me that in Islam, the Sharia says girls that are 10 years old should get married.

As soon as they left, my wife and I shut the door. We looked at each other, and she started to cry and pray. We were so scared they were going to take our daughter from us. They escaped in the back of a taxi, Isa says they talked their way through three ISIS checkpoints, and traveled for over four hours on back roads to Erbil, where, like Archbishop Chirac, they now live as refugees. Some 30,000 Christians were living in Erbil before this crisis,

most of them Chaldean Catholics, who follow their own ancient traditions but recognize the authority of the Pope. Bashar Warda is the archbishop of this diocese. He says his congregation has swelled by more than 60,000 refugees. As Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq, has become a safe haven for Christians fleeing the Islamic State. This is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Thousands of years old. 2,000 years old, almost. And when you look

at it today, where is that Christian community here? Disappearing. It's dying. Archbishop Warder said Christians in Iraq ironically felt safer under Saddam Hussein. Democracy brought a new wave of persecution and prompted a mass exodus of Christians. When the U.S. withdrew completely in 2011, Archbishop Warder said the situation became even worse because Iraq's new leaders were incapable of governing without help. I think the American support was needed, needed forcefully. You cannot leave the country like this and tell them, well, we've liberated you, we cannot do the job for you. We are walking away and this is your country, rule it.

So in your view, walking away in 2011 was just as damaging to Iraq as 2003 when the US invaded? Yes, it's not blaming, but that's the reality. This is not what you came for in 2003. 4,000 sacrifices of the American soldiers was not meant to come to this day. Christianity in Iraq was born in the towns and villages of the Nineveh Plains, like this one called Tel Escof,

which lies less than 20 miles north of Mosul. Christians have lived here and walked these streets for over a thousand years. But today, there's no one. They're all gone, driven out by fear. And one of the most striking things you notice is the silence. Every road was deserted, houses and possessions abandoned, others destroyed. Tel Asgharf had always been a refuge for Iraq's Christians, until last year when ISIS moved in and 7,000 Christians fled. Three weeks later, Kurdish soldiers pushed the terrorists out. But Father Rani Hana said ISIS instilled

such fear here that his people won't come back. He worries too, but returns for a few hours every morning to check on his church, which he said ISIS fighters used as their base. He told us one of them called him on his cell phone to ask how to operate the church generator. They really did. They asked you that. And you told them? I guided them to where it was located around the corner from here, he told us, and explained how to turn it on. The last thing I said was to please take care of the church. And they just hung up. The cleansing of Iraq's Christians from this land is something Archbishop Sharaf believes ought to be generating a much louder cry of outrage

from his Muslim friends and neighbours. Speak up! Of course there is good people in the Islam people. There is not all Muslim people, they are bad. I believe. But where is the good people? Where is their voice? Nothing.

Few. Few. With everything that has happened here to the Christians, what has been lost? They lost our dignity here. I'm sorry to say that. We don't have dignity in our country, in our land. Most everyone we met welcomed U.S.-led airstrikes here, but they also said it's not nearly enough.

Taking back Mosul, a city of about 1.5 million people, is widely understood to be a difficult prospect. Archbishop Warder believes the Iraqi army can't do it alone. And as long as the city remains in the hands of ISIS, who he refers to as Daesh, its Arabic name, no Christians will be going home. For me, Daesh is a cancer. It's a disease. So sometimes you take some hard measures, unfortunate measures,

to deal and to treat this cancer. So you want to see a major military offensive to retake Mosul? Yes, to get Iraq to its normal situation. And by getting Iraq to its normal situation, you mean restoring the border between Iraq and Syria? Yes. Getting rid of Daesh, the Islamic State? Exactly. Defeating them militarily? Please God. The Christian community hastily set up militias to guard their deserted villages and homes along the front line. And they're getting a little help. As I'm going this way.

We were surprised to come across American Brett Felton, a Christian veteran of the Iraq War, who traveled on his own from Detroit to train Christian volunteers. And this man, Hamas, who said he came from Australia, driven to defend the land where he was born. What do you think the Islamic State intends to do with the Christians here? To wipe them out. To be nothing, no place left that bears the name of Christian Christianity. Christians in the frontier town of Al-Khosh live in the shadow of the Islamic State.

Under constant threat, the militiamen keep watch as they celebrate their faith and carry out traditions that are as old as Christianity on the Nineveh Plains. What shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. It happened in less than a minute. Three students were shot to death and three more wounded in a high school outside Cleveland.

An assistant football coach named Frank Hall helped stop the shooting. When we first reported this story last year, Hall told us that he wished there was no reason to know his name, or God forbid, think of him as a hero. He's the type you'd call a regular guy. On February 27, 2012, Hull was doing what he always did. With hugs and fist bumps, he kept order among a hundred kids gathering in the school cafeteria before class. Then, Hall was confronted by a question no one can truly answer. What would you do at the sound of gunfire? No time to think. There's only the reflex of character. This is the story of a fraction of a second and the months of consequences that follow. So much time has passed.

And still, no one in Chardon, Ohio, knows why it happened. In February 2012, they'd been marking the inches of Lake Erie snow and counting the days till the tapping of the maples. Forbes had said that this was the fourth best place in America to raise a family, and many of the 5,000 in Chardon credited the high school, ranked excellent 13 years in a row. 911, what is your emergency? This is Chardon High School calling. We need assistance right now. Here's a student with a gun.

At 7.35, the call came from the principal's office. There, teacher Tim Armelli heard shots down the hall. You knew that the shooting was what it was. Your head's telling you there's shots. Your heart's not believing it. You freeze for a moment. You don't think you're going to see your wife or kids again. You got on to the school PA and said what?

Lockdown. Teachers go to lockdown. In the cafeteria, through the door on the left, a 17-year-old boy who went by the initials TJ was shooting to kill. He'd put ten rounds in his gun and six letters across his shirt. Killer, it said. I saw a young man firing into a crowd. I just stood up, shoved my table out of the way and started after him. It's tough even now for Frank Hall to speak of it. But with the support of his wife, he told us what happened when he charged at the boy with the gun. He raises his weapon at me. I jump behind a Pepsi machine. I hear another fire. That bullet missed Hull, so he kept chasing the student down

the corridor. And he sees me, and he takes off down the hallway. So I chase after him again, screaming, yelling. Kid's still running, and I get to within like six, seven, eight feet of him, and there was a young man at the end of the hallway right in front of the doors, Nick Wassil, and TJ shoots him in the back. I was shot once in the spine. That paralyzed me, and that's when I went down. What do you remember seeing or hearing of Coach Hall in those moments?

He said as he was running by me, he said, hang tight, I'll be back. Pursued by Hall, the shooter ran without loading the second magazine that he carried with ten more rounds. Then I chased TJ out the doors, and I lose him in the parking lot. And 47 seconds. On the first shot until he exited the door, it was 47 seconds on the first shot till he exited the door it's 47 seconds paul ran back to the cafeteria where daniel parmator dimitri is hewlin and russell king were not going to survive you just knew that it wasn't going to end well you know so i just asked

god to be in his place with us and to be with them. I went around. I tried to comfort him the best I could. We just had a long tear on his face, and I wiped it and tried to make Danny and Russell as comfortable as I could. They were still breathing. They were trying to fight. What was only a couple minutes seemed like forever waiting for the paramedics and law enforcement.

It was tough. But those boys needed somebody to be with them. Yeah, you know, I'm so thankful. Very thankful that I could be there. The emergency plan, in essence, is to get all the kids out of the hallways, get them all into rooms, lock those rooms, and shelter in place. Correct. Frank didn't do that.

He didn't. He acted as a father. You know, he acted as someone that was those kids' parents while they were away from home. There's nothing in the plan that says assistant football coach chases gunman through the school. You know, you just think about getting him out of your room, you know, getting him out of your area. And you did that. You got him out of the cafeteria, you know, get him out of your area. And you did that. You got him out of the cafeteria, but you kept going. I just reacted that day.

I just, I just, you know, he was hurting our kids, and that's all I did. I just reacted. As soon as you're staring down the barrel of a gun, you just kind of, you take off. Death missed Nate Mueller by less than an inch. A bullet tore through the top of his ear. And for him to be a teacher and to put himself in harm's way, to chase him out of the building, for kids that were just students in his cafeteria, is amazing. He never thought of you as just students.

No. No, we were his family. And you know that now. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It wasn't long after the gunman bolted out through that door that he was found in the woods by the police. He gave himself up without incident, pled guilty, and has been sentenced to life without parole. He has never given a reason or a motive for the shooting.

At sentencing, the judge wondered whether he did it to make a name for himself. So the community asked us to keep his name and his face out of this. And we have. When it was all over, Hall texted, I'm okay, to his wife, Ashley. But she didn't know what he'd done until he came home. He said he was sorry that he had put himself in that situation. And that, you know, he realized that he could have been shot. And that would have left us without a husband and without a father. There was a lot to leave behind.

Ashley works for the county, placing kids in foster care, and the Halls have adopted four of those kids, Christian, Quincy, and the twins, Mark and Sean. Sheltering kids is a way of life for the Hulls, which is why he can't understand how school shootings have become a fact of life. We need to change. We've got to stop this from happening. I mean, I remember when Columbine happened. Everybody in the world knew what Columbine was. I mean, I can't sit here and tell you every school has had a

school shooting now. We need to find ways to secure our schools better. We need to make a stand right now that our schools need to be the most important thing we have in this country. Not Wall Street, not Capitol Hill, our schools. We need to determine that in our minds and heart that our school and our children need to be the most important thing we have. That's the bottom line. Three days after the shooting, the students reclaimed the most important thing they had, Chardon High School. Frank chasing the shooter out of the building allowed us to not say we were victims. It allowed us to fight the evil.

We were not going to let that evil take over. And Frank, by his show of courage, allowed all of us to fight. They came down, arm in arm, 1,100 kids marched right down the center of the street and coming back into that school and take it over. It was our first step in our recovery. I don't know why this happened. I only wish I could have done more. I'm not a hero.

Just a football coach and a study hall teacher. A hero in a tragedy never feels heroic. Every hug, every thank you that Frank Hall endured took him back to the boys in the cafeteria. You know, they'll never have another birthday. Frank, no one could ask you to do more than you did. You know, I know. It's just hard to... You just want so bad to be able to take them home. Sometimes I get mad about it, I get angry.

You know, Sky, I wish you weren't here. I wish I was never on TV. I'd give anything for this not to be happening right now. Coach Hall returned to Chardon, but he was tormented by the memories. Ten months later, when the shooting happened at Sandy Hook Elementary, he couldn't finish the day. It wasn't long after that when Hall did something that surprised and saddened many. He left Chardon High School.

He had heard about some kids in the county next door who needed him more. Ashtabula County had not made the cut for best place to raise a family. 31% of the kids here live in poverty. The high school had won only two football games in three years. The head coach quit and that's how Frank Hall made a comeback. Green, go straight! Get it down! Go! Hey, great kick!

Nice shot. Act like gentlemen, play hard, right? Yes, sir. He changed everything around here. Tyree Meeks and Demondre Haywood are on Hall's new team at Lakeside High. He told us he's not only going to make us great football players, but he's going to make us men. It sounds to me like with Coach Hall, it's not all about X's and O's and blocking and tackling. Oh, no, no.

You've done a great job, from your effort on the practice field, to your effort in the classroom, to your respect of the school and the teachers. When a player smarted off to one of the teachers, Hall made it a problem for everyone on the team, a reflex of character. Each and every single last football player had to go and apologize to that teacher, just because it's that important. Wait, the players who didn't talk back to the teacher also had to go apologize? What was the point of that?

It's just based upon, like, if one of us messes up, we all mess up. Like, family, you know? It's the show that we've changed, because you know, last year before Coach Hall came here, the football players, they were getting in trouble all the time, and he wanted to really make sure that the teachers knew that it was a big change. And so we all went down there and apologized to her for how our brother acted towards them. And so there was a big change on the field. They won their first game, then two more.

This last season was building toward their final contest, an away game, back at Chardon High. It had been eight months since Coach Hall had left. We were with you at the ball game with Chardon. Couldn't help but notice when you walked out by yourself to collect your thoughts. And I wonder what you were thinking in that moment. I was being thankful. All the blessings I have, you know, four healthy boys, a beautiful wife.

I'm very thankful for my players, for those kids at Chardon, for this community. Thankful. Coach, welcome back, and thank you. An opposing coach never gets a welcome like this. Hull didn't win the game. His old team at Chardon was better that night, 49-21. But it was the homecoming that mattered more. How you been? How you guys doing?

At the end, two teams rallied around one coach, a regular guy of extraordinary character. I'm so proud right now of each and every one of you. Serve your family. Take care of your family. Serve them, you understand me? I love you. Since we met Frank Hall, he has created a foundation dedicated to ending school violence. He and Ashley have added two more boys to their growing family.

And under Hall's direction, his team won their first game of the season. There are more gyms in America than ever before, but we're more overweight than we've ever been. Lots of people have theories as to why, but we're about to introduce you to a man who says he's figured it out. Greg Glassman is the unlikely creator of the biggest fitness phenomenon in the world right now called CrossFit. It's a workout program that's unpredictable, uncompromising, and raw, a lot like the man who created it. Glassman likes to say he runs CrossFit more like a biker gang than a business, but as we first reported this past spring, business is booming. In just 15 years, the king of CrossFit has created the largest gym chain in history and turned fitness into a spectator sport.

Last summer, the finals of the CrossFit Games were broadcast on ESPN. 45,000 people showed up to watch contestants, who look like superheroes, heave, jump, and lift until a champion was crowned. Rich Froding is the fittest man in history. If this is the body that defines a new kind of fitness, I think we'll be all right. the brain that dreamt it all up belongs to Greg Glassman. Well before CrossFit was a competition, he designed it as a new way to work out.

He says it can transform anyone, and he's not just talking about bulging biceps and six-pack abs. I'll deliver you to your genetic potential. Your genetic potential. It sounds like you're creating a robot or something. Look at her. She was meant to look like that. That's what nature would have carved from her a million years ago, or she'd have been eaten. Greg Glassman hardly looks like an exercise guru. There's no hint of ripped muscle underneath his untouched shirt, but he is widely considered the most powerful man in fitness today.

Glassman is the architect of CrossFit, a workout program that mixes elements of weightlifting, calisthenics and gymnastics. The classes take place in what CrossFitters call a box, a stripped down willfully ugly space. The exercises range from simple to sadistic. And made Greg Glassman, a college dropout, a multimillionaire. You know, you didn't invent weightlifting. You didn't invent calisthenics. Nope.

You didn't invent gymnastics. So what'd you do? I invented that doing lateral raises and curls while eating pretzels is dumb. That's what I invented. He says for decades, gym owners have ignored the importance of diet and been all too happy to watch their members fall into a trance on the treadmill. Do you think people think they're getting a workout and aren't getting a workout? Well, I mean, look, you get sweaty and you come home tired. I can appreciate that.

But many people are much closer to doing nothing than they perhaps realize. Is everything up till now been wrong in the fitness industry? Yes. Yeah. As far as I can see. CrossFit classes usually don't take more than an hour. Athletes compete against each other and the clock. To keep their energy up, they're encouraged to follow something called a paleo diet, heavy on meat and vegetables, food fit for a caveman. I have heard you say that CrossFit prepares athletes for, quote, the unknown and the unforeseen. It sounds like you're getting ready

to go to war. Yeah, why not? Yeah, for getting ready for war, getting ready for earthquake, getting ready for mugging, getting ready for the horrible news that you have leukemia. What awaits us all is challenge, that's for sure. CrossFit, he says, is creating a new super breed. And although some of their athletes appear to be carved out of marble,

he says the focus isn't big muscles. It's simple, functional movements like squatting and lifting, whether you're 25 or 75. Would I use deadlifts in both cases? Absolutely. Squatting in both cases? Absolutely. You'd have a 75-year-old doing deadlifts? Uh-huh. Yeah. To say no is to say that if you drop your pen on the ground, you're not going to pick it up. It's a deadlift. It's picking something off the ground. It does not require a physician's okay.

If your physician doesn't think you should deadlift, you need to get a new doctor is what you need. Glassman started to teach people to lift, jump, and sprint long before CrossFit became a household name. He had polio as a child and used gymnastics to regain his strength. In high school, a bad dismount left him with a permanent limp. He became a personal trainer and started experimenting with some of the exercises that would become the backbone of his creation. His workouts were loud, disruptive, and gym owners were not impressed. How many gyms did you get tossed out of? About five or six. Five or six.

You don't like being told what to do? Oh, I don't mind being told what to do. I just won't do it. Just say anything you want. He opened his own gym in Santa Cruz in 2001. Today, there are 12,000 CrossFit boxes around the world, each one defiantly barren. The company is private, but estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Greg Glassman owns 100% of it. He has no board of directors and says he never had a business plan.

This is awesome. Can I have a picture with you? I would love that. But recently found himself at Harvard Business School. If you like metrics, you like money, we're the fastest growing large chain on earth. We have broken all records. Where he was invited to share the secrets behind CrossFit's meteoric growth. I'm not trying to grow a business. I'm doing the right

things for the right people for the right reasons. One reason CrossFit's grown so fast is because just about anyone who wants to open a box can, after paying a $3,000 yearly fee and passing a two-day seminar. It's how the company makes most of its money. Two days to take a course, then I can open a gym? Amazing, huh? I mean, to me, is that enough? Well, here was the alternative. Here's what it used to be. All you had to have was the money.

And you don't even have to take a test. That's where every other chain came from. Someone just launched them. And unlike most gym chains, Glassman, a diehard libertarian, relinquishes nearly all control over his affiliates. They can open a box next door to another box if they want. It's probably not surprising Glassman believes the strongest one will survive. You don't have an iron fist on them on how they do this.

Nope, it's not a franchise. They can do it any way they want to do it. This isn't Kentucky Fried Chicken or, yeah, it's CrossFit. You let them do what they want to do. I do. Although he occasionally fires up the company plane, grabs the family dog, and drops in on an affiliate unannounced. So you're not going in there looking for trouble? Not at all. But if I saw someone pulling with their arms or a rounded back, I think it's inevitable that I would say something. At the company's media office in the Silicon Valley, they publish a different workout of the day every day and more information about CrossFit than you could read in a lifetime. And what is the cost for people to access the stuff that you're putting on? There is no no cost how does that make

sense yeah it it didn't until we did it you know and the more video we give away the more money we make crossfitters created a huge virtual community posting videos of workouts and wipeouts and spreading glassman's gospel around the world, in Africa, Siberia, and on the front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether soldiers or soccer moms, the evangelical enthusiasm of Glassman's disciples has led to criticism. When you hear people describe CrossFit as a cult, what do you say? Oh, I don't mind that. What if someone led a cult and they didn't know they were? I mean, that would be messed up, right?

So I started trying to think what makes us a cult or what would define a cult. One is recruiting, and I ain't recruiting anybody. I don't, you know, you got, people call me up, hey, I was thinking about joining CrossFit. Well, then call back when you've decided to, you know? So the doors are open, you're not recruiting. Yeah, we're not recruiting, we're not barring the doors. Well, then call back when you've decided to, you know? So the doors are open. You're not recruiting. We're not recruiting.

We're not barring the doors. I mean, it really is an open house. Glassman says he spends most of his time defending the CrossFit brand with an iron fist. If you don't defend it, you won't have a brand for long. We are in shark-infested waters, and I've got shark-repellent attorneys. How many attorneys do you have working for you now?

Dozens. They're everywhere. They're everywhere, like freaking leprechauns. The most exercised muscle at CrossFit may be this man, their general counsel. He oversees a legal staff of 12, but Glassman has hired another 80, eight zero outside law firms to defend its reputation and its trademark. They've gone after a company selling bogus CrossFit branded jump ropes, taken on gyms in Puerto Rico and Germany who use their name without permission,

and are suing the publishers of a study that allegedly contained made up information about CrossFit's safety record. I love my lawyers. I love my lawyers. Very few people say that. I know, it's weird. So how many lawsuits have you been involved in? 30 or 40? More? 50? Yeah. Have you lost any? No, I've won every single one of them. You like the fight? I do. Yeah. His most tenacious fight revolves around headlines that CrossFit could be dangerous, or worse, deadly. Some journalists have questioned how the regimen might be bad for one's back, shoulders, or even kidneys. Because it's such a new phenomenon, there aren't many studies about the overall safety of CrossFit. The few that exist found it to be about as safe as gymnastics or weightlifting,

and less likely to cause an injury than running. Greg Glassman is so sure it's safe, the father of six allowed his future seventh child to be part of this class. So that person is sitting in their living room saying, this all sounds interesting, but I've heard things and I don't want to get hurt. Stay in your chair where you're sure to get hurt, and you'll become one of the 300,000 people that will die next year from sitting in their chair doing nothing.

Another reason Glassman's been so good at getting people out of their chairs is the success of the CrossFit Games. This year, 273,000 people around the world competed for a chance to be featured in the finals. It is a spectacle. Part Olympic Games, part Hunger Games. The winner is crowned the fittest man or woman on Earth. A title you'll be shocked to learn. Greg Glassman had his lawyer's trademark.

He told us no one in the world is in better shape than the game's top athletes. You bent the mortgage, not the rent. I bent everything on it. You're going to come and best the game's athletes out of nowhere, the same way you're going to walk out here on the street and put together a Stanley Cup challenge out of morons walking by. It ain't going to happen. CrossFit Games title within reach. The games are sponsored by Reebok. CrossFit is credited with re-energizing the Reebok brand and boosting sales.

Fitness apparel should be technical apparel. But five years into a 10-year deal that may be CrossFit's most important commercial partnership, Glassman has developed some strong opinions about Reebok's owners, the German company Adidas. And he wasn't shy about sharing them on 60 Minutes. I'd like to see Reebok sold. To who? Someone young, fresh, excited and willing to enter into the modern era of things. That's a pretty bold thing for you to say.

Yeah. Does everyone ever say to you, Greg, you shouldn't say that? Yeah. I've had people tell me, boy, he you shouldn't say that? Yeah. I've had people tell me, boy, he's stark raving mad, but he sure is sincere, you know? Like, okay, good. You know I believe it. You know I believe it. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.