USO News
Sports Illustrated’s Peter King Tours NFL Training Camps in Mobile USO to Show Support for Military
Monday, August 01, 2011
By Tom Sileo
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. – Inside a Mobile USO lounge sits one of the USO’s newest volunteers: Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King. It’s the start of a very unusual USO tour, as King visits 22 NFL training camps onboard the Mobile USO while promoting the USO’s mission to lift the spirits of our troops and their families.
As we talk inside the air-conditioned vehicle on a hot Georgia day, I wonder what drives the prolific pro football writer to support our troops with such enthusiasm. Mementos line the walls, donated by troops who deeply appreciate the chance to use the Mobile USO near their bases. We’re surrounded by cold water and sodas, flat-screen TVs, video game consoles – all ready and waiting for the troops King will meet over the next three weeks.
As King embarks on a tour of NFL training camps in a vehicle often described as a “USO on wheels,” I wanted to know what brought King and the USO together.
It all started six years ago, on August 1, 2005. During another cross-country tour of NFL training camps, King found himself sitting next to Sgt. 1st Class Mike McGuire at a Major League Baseball game during a beautiful summer night in St. Louis.
Instead of Army fatigues, Sgt. 1st Class McGuire was wearing the colors of his favorite big league team, the St. Louis Cardinals, when he started chatting with King about the city’s NFL team, the Rams. After some football talk, McGuire told King he was training at nearby Fort Leonard Wood before heading back to his family in Germany and then to Iraq, where he would be to lead a platoon hunting for improvised explosive devices, the leading killer of U.S. troops in post-9/11 war zones.
While King is one of America’s most trusted and respected sportswriters, the biggest risk he faces while doing his job is being accidentally run over by an NFL running back while watching practice from the sidelines. The journalist was amazed after getting the chance to hear McGuire describe what he and his fellow troops put on the line.
“I was shocked at how accepting he was of the risks he took every day,” King said. “If you were to look at his job versus the job that anybody else in the world would have, he’s got to have one of the ten most dangerous jobs that exists on planet earth.”
Inspired by his chance meeting with an American hero, King devoted the next edition of his popular SI.com Monday Morning Quarterback column to McGuire’s story. When it comes to supporting the troops, King hasn’t looked back since.
In 2008, King embarked on a seven-day USO trip to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan with three NFL players to visit men and women in uniform deployed overseas. The writer said the two biggest eye-openers on his overseas tour were the conditions in which deployed troops live and fight, and the passion of the USO employees and volunteers who support them.
“I just gained a huge appreciation of what the USO does,” King said from the USO vehicle he will spend the next three weeks inside. “It’s so important.
“Imagine these guys who do these 12 hours on, 12 hours off shifts looking for IEDs in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” King said. “Imagine you come off there, and you need something to do to relax … I don’t know what your options are, but I know the USO has increased those options ten-fold.”
In 2010, King, who stayed in close touch with McGuire before, during and after his Iraq deployment, joined with the USO, in honor of his friend, to encourage donations to the USO2Go program, which delivers everything from snacks and toiletries to video game systems and DVDs to men and women in the field.
“(Troops) will be able to play video games,” King said of the program. “They’ll be able to have a real, legitimate computer to communicate back home with people.”
Sports Illustrated is paying for the costs to support King’s latest USO venture, which will give troops visiting these NFL training camps the opportunity to enjoy the comforts of Mobile USO.
During the nationwide journey, which runs through August 24, where it finishes at Dallas Cowboys camp in San Antonio, what King looks forward to most is talking football with more brave troops like the soldier he met in St. Louis and sharing his thoughts on SI.com’s Training Camp Across America site.
“I’ve got this incredible job where when I’m going around the country, I get to talk to people and they say, ‘Hey what do you think of the Falcons this year?’ or ‘What do you think of the Bears?’ ” he said. “If it’s a man or woman in uniform who is interested ... I’ll try to give them a few paragraphs rather than a few sentences.”
On July 4, King gave more than a few paragraphs to Sgt. 1st Class McGuire. The writer gave his friend his own Monday Morning Quarterback column. Instead of an NFL training camp, the article was written from an unlikely location: Camp Spann in Afghanistan, where McGuire and his fellow soldiers are deployed.
“Happy Independence Day from the front! It’s hard to believe I am here, with my company, still defending our country,” the soldier wrote on SI.com. “I have been hit by an improvised explosive device 12 times. Twelve! And I don’t have a scratch! So I am very grateful to be able to wish you a happy Fourth of July on behalf of my troops and me.”
Peter King is still most commonly associated with an acronym almost every American recognizes: “NFL.” But six years after making a new friend, he’s crisscrossing the country in a vehicle bearing initials that have lifted the spirits of troops and military families since World War II: “USO.”
“We all owe our troops as much as we can give them,” King said.
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* Learn more about the Mobile USO program and donate today.
(Top left image: Peter King, left, speaks with the USO's Tom Sileo. Photo credit: USO/Leigh Edmonds)
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