Recently, wide receiver Jordan Matthews had the opportunity to be part of a special project at The Franklin Institute. The new SportsZone will be unveiled this Saturday and it features a 40-foot track where people have the chance to virtually race the Eagle and other sports figures. Matthews saw the final product on Wednesday night and shared his thoughts on the exhibit ...

It's a really cool thing to be in The Franklin Institute, and it's definitely an honor to be in a place like that. I came from a school like Vanderbilt where education was always important, and obviously sports have always been important to me too. To be able to put both in the same thing and have my face on it, I think it's huge. The whole experience was awesome. I can't wait until I get to bring my little cousins up here to Philadelphia so they can try it out. The funniest thing is when I told my older cousins and my parents and my brother, Justin, they were all like, "I'm going to beat you. I'm going to beat you." If they or any of my teammates ever tried it, they'd have no chance. I don't think they could catch me.

To get everything ready for the SportsZone, I had to go out to Dallas and they had me on this runway against a green screen. I had to go out there and run in full pads. Sometimes I had my helmet on. Sometimes it was without my helmet. Then I had to say a few things and do a couple more reps. In the end, they took the best one and that's what they ended using as the hologram. It was definitely tiring though. It's not like I did it in one take and that was it. I got a good workout in that day, but it was really fun.

I think this exhibit is going to be huge for promoting physical fitness to younger kids. One of the best parts about it is every sport is in there. As a kid growing up, I played soccer, baseball, basketball, football. I think that needs to be stressed to kids more. I think nowadays for some reason, people are putting an emphasis on kids playing one sport and focusing on that. What people don't realize is when you focus on only one sport, your injury rate goes higher because your body is only used to being on a certain type of turf or hardwood or grass. You also become single-minded in the fact that you only become athletic in one thing. When you cross-train, your body becomes healthier. You become a more athletic person and a more complete person. You can choose what you want to do a little later on in life. I hope that a lot of people get that out of this exhibit and that kids want to try more things after visiting.

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