Jim Biever / Green Bay Packers
Colledge, playing here against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2009, spent nine years in the NFL.
When professional football players retire, many find second careers in radio or TV broadcasting. That included former Green Bay Packers guard Daryn Colledge, who took off his helmet for the last time in 2014.
But then he realized he wasn’t finished with being part of a team.
In mid-April, Colledge took leave from his part-time sports-talk gig at radio station KTIK in Boise, Idaho, to become a soldier in the U.S. Army National Guard.
“A lot of people have said, ‘You’re absolutely crazy. You earned millions of dollars playing football. Why would you do this now?” admits Colledge, 34, who began his nine-year NFL career in Green Bay and also played for the Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins. “The fact of the matter is, it just doesn’t seem that crazy to me. A lot of my teammates in college became firefighters, police officers and public servants. When you’re fortunate enough to be an athlete, you look inside yourself to decide what kind of impact you want to make.”
Colledge weighed about 310 pounds when he retired from the NFL. Because the average military man weighs around 200, he trained daily on his own and was down to 265 before boot camp; and he will need to pass a series of increasingly challenging fitness tests as he moves through the process of becoming a soldier.
After 10 weeks of basic combat training at Fort Jackson, in Columbia, S.C., Colledge will transfer to Virginia’s Fort Eustis for 15 weeks of Advanced Individual Training. Then he will officially join Company A, 1st Battalion of the 168th Aviation Regiment at Gowen Field Air National Guard Base in Boise, where he will work as a mechanic on 15T UH-60, or Black Hawk, helicopters with the goal of becoming a crew chief.
And he’ll be back on the air for KTIK in October, just in time to talk football.
Colledge says he joined the National Guard for an opportunity to participate in humanitarian efforts that give back to his community in Boise, where he attended college and lives with his wife, Megan, and two young daughters.
Colledge grew up in North Pole, Alaska, near two military bases. Several relatives served in the Armed Forces, his brother is an active-duty military member, and Megan comes from a military family.
Originally, Colledge planned to join the U.S. Navy after graduating from Boise State University, where he was a four-year starter for the Broncos. But then the Packers picked him in the second round of the 2006 NFL Draft.
His military dreams were rekindled during the 2011 offseason following Green Bay’s Super Bowl XLV victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, when a handful of Packers took a trip sponsored by the Navy Entertainment Program and visited U.S. troops overseas.
“That trip stuck with me,” Colledge says. “I was impressed by their commitment and brotherhood and sacrifice. I’ve gotten to the point in my life where my family is taken care of. This is an opportunity for me to go out and continue to protect the things I’ve worked so hard for.”
Before he left for basic training, Colledge was often asked about Pat Tillman, a safety for the Arizona Cardinals who enlisted in the Army after 9/11. He was killed in 2004 during a friendly-fire incident in the mountains of Afghanistan.
“I’m uncomfortable being mentioned in the same sentence as Pat Tillman,” Colledge says. “Pat Tillman obviously sacrificed everything to serve his country at a time when he thought the United States was most vulnerable. Then he went out there and gave his life in a tragic incident. He’s a hero. I haven’t done anything yet.”
Still, Colledge knows he’s made the right decision: “I’m in the place I absolutely should be. I can’t imagine doing anything different.”
