SEASON 3 EPISODE 4 | Nate Boyer from Merging Vets & Players (MVP)

In this episode, former Green Beret and NFL player Nate Boyer shares his remarkable journey from military service to the football field, and how both paths ultimately led him to co-found Merging Vets & Players (MVP)—a nonprofit that fosters community among veterans and pro athletes. Nate reflects on the parallels between military duty and elite sports, the identity challenges that arise after both careers, and the healing power of peer connection. This episode explores themes of purpose, resilience, and the importance of believing in yourself and in something greater as a driving force in life, service, and sport. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Same way I learned how to shoot a pistol. Yeah. Stance, grip, sight picture, aim small, miss small, slowest, smooth, smooth is fast, all those things translated from shooting a gun to long stamping football. Nate, great to have you here, man. Good to be here, brother. And thanks so much for helping us out with that ticket giveaway. Of course. That was amazing. That went down very smoothly. It went to the red guy. I think we actually surprised him too, which is uh No, we did. He stood out. He was like, whoa. Yeah. Nice. Thanks for that. Um, so Nate, you're one of the kind of few guys to have worn both a NFL jersey and uh, you know, the military uniform. Yeah. Um, but your journey was definitely not linear. You've made a few twists and turns there. Still doing that, which is a beautiful thing. Um, and then, you know, of course, you went on to found uh co-found merging design players. Yeah. So let's let's start from the beginning, man. How'd you make your way into the service? Because that was the first thing you did, right? Yeah. Um, you know, I didn't join right out of high school. I was 20 years old when 9-11 happened, and definitely got me thinking about the military at that time. But you know, I just I don't think I had a lot of belief in myself. I don't I don't know if I thought I was the right man for the job. I should have people's lives in my hands. You know what I mean? I just didn't, I don't know, I didn't know. And a couple years later, I find myself doing some relief work over in the Dolph Fur. Okay. And it completely changed my perspective. It was like, it was less about that, worried about that, and more about like, if not me, who? And there's people in this world that just don't have what we have here and probably never will. Yeah. But to fight for that, I think uh even just the possibility of it, I think is worth something, you know. We we we paid a lottery ticket being born in America, um, or if you were able to get here somehow. And and I wanted to earn that in some way. So that's what kind of led me to the military. And and even on that trip in the Darth Fur, it was a bit of a special forces mission because I kind of went by myself and talked my way on to a UN flight, got out there. And so after that, and I found out what the Green Berets really did, you know, and there was a human humanitarian side to what we're doing as well. Uh, it just made sense. And so I 2004 went to the recruiter and said, This is what I want to do. And you knew at that point that you wanted to go for Green Beret. Yeah, yeah. They had this contract that they'd opened, I think, in 03. Oh, cool. Called the 18x-ray contract. So you could come in off the street if you had scored enough, high enough on like language aptitude, ASVAB, psyche valve, stuff like that. You could go to basic training, air one school, and then straight into special forces selection. If you get selected and you start your roughly year and a half long training to earn a dream beret. So I I took that contract. Beautiful. And how long did you end up uh serving for? So I did 10 years total. The last four were in the National Guard while I was in college at Texas. But I still count those because I deployed in the summertime. Yeah, I you know, I I still was just during the season and during going to school, I wasn't. You know, I mean, I was I was I did the the weekend warrior once a month thing. You know, and I I've been there. I've been there. Yeah, exactly. So okay, so we're here at Media Week for leading up to the Super Bowl, you know, it's stuff that you're quite familiar with in terms of like the NFL. I wish I was more familiar with the Super Bowl, like I can imagine. But anyway, sorry. No, no, no. Just asking how uh, you know, as as we said before, there's only so many of you who've kind of been in those both both of those worlds, and you did a great job merging those two, of course, with MVP. But like, talk a little bit about what brought you to the NFL. It was a lot of hard work in college, I know that um and then how your experience has been. Yeah, I mean, look, just to get that shot, I only played in one career game in the NFL, but just to have that opportunity is unbelievable. Yeah, and I never would have tried, my dad told me this actually. He said, because I didn't play football growing up. I played baseball, I played basketball, I played all these other sports, but football was my favorite. I grew up in the Bay Area, the Niners, their dynasty was occurring while I was a child. Yeah. And he said, you know what? If you would have played Pop Warner or maybe even high school football, you would have known how hard it was. And you never would have tried to go play at Texas, and much less the NFL. But because you didn't, because you had a little bit of naivety with that, and because you served in the military, developed this confidence and belief in yourself, yeah, and the work ethic, that's why you went and tried. He said, I think that's why you went and and and and really thought you you had the audacity to think you could make the team and good good word there, probably. And and I did, you know what I mean? It will and he's right. I think he's totally, totally correct. It's like sometimes we overthink things and we we we we kind of psych ourselves out, sure you know, instead of just show up and go for it. And oh, at the end of the day, what if I didn't make the team at Texas? Like life goes on, you know. But the wild snapper position is a very like it's niche. It's very not only niche, but it's also very, it's like almost like the kicker, right? You're so focused on what you're doing in that instant. Yeah, like it probably took an amazing amount of dedication and focus for you to get as good as you did at that position. Well, it's it's a thankless job for the most part. If you do it right 500 times in a row, yeah, nobody cares. You screw it up once, right? Your name's in the paper for all the wrong reasons. So there's a lot of that in the military, though. Like we do a lot of thankless jobs. Not that people aren't grateful, you know, thank for your service, all that stuff, but they don't know the app we'll need to. Yeah, a lot of what we're doing, it's not cool, it's not sexy, it's not fun. No, indeed, right? And so you can do it because it's like this is what you're this is my job, this is my duty, this is what I gotta do, this is how I'm going to help the team. Yeah. And being a good athlete, not a great athlete, puts you in a position, someone like me, I I walked on as a safety, I wasn't getting on the field, I couldn't keep up with the receivers, you know, I wasn't gonna cover them. So I had to find a way. And long snapping was unique and something that I could equate to like the same way I learned how to shoot a pistol. Yeah. Stance, grip, sight picture, aim small, miss small, slowest smooth, smoothest fast, all those things translated from shooting a gun to uh long snapping a football. As funny as it sounds, but once I was able to break it down in that way, yeah, and you can focus in that way, I think each crowd noise, the distractions, the scoreboard, all that stuff goes away because you have to focus on those little little details. Would you say, without having you know done the military, the green berets, especially that you know, being as an accomplished college long snapper as you became might not have been within the same amount of reach? I don't know. We'll I will Yeah, I don't I mean, first of all, I don't think I would have even tried to play football. Right. But second of all, I probably wouldn't have maybe developed the humility to do something like long snapping because I just for me it was like I just want to find I just want to play. I want to play meaningful snaps. I remember Mac Brown, you know, as a coach at the time, and he really wanted me to be a voice in the locker room. And I was like, I understand why you do, coach, because of what I, you know, my past, but yeah, if I feel like if I'm not playing, if I'm not in the game, if I'm not on the field with the other guys, I don't know if that's my place. You know, I'm I'm happy to mentor some guys or talk to them, but for me to be that voice, I need to be playing too, right? And so I that was the only way I was playing, was find a job like that, you know. Okay, so then fast forward a bit. What led you to MVP? So you know, I've been spent time in the in the in the team room in the military, in the locker room in football, those jerseys and the camouflage, very different, uh, but similar in the sense of like the identity and then the camaraderie, you know, the brotherhood. When you ask vets and athletes what they miss the most about no longer playing or serving, they always sit almost always say the guys. I miss the guys. You don't miss the BS. You know what I mean? They kind of miss the clowns, but not the circus, which is sort of funny. Um totally. But uh, but you know, you you you miss that. You you that's the number one thing. And I got out of the military in 2015 in February. I got there, that was when I transitioned out of the guard. Texas was for college was done. I had a you know, that brief stint in Seattle, that opportunity, got to play in one game, it was awesome. But then I got cut. And it was that was it. And it was like, I got no uniform now, no locker room, no, no guys, you know what I mean? And I was 34, so I felt 24. Felt like I had a lot in the tank, but I just yeah, I was sort of all this energy and nowhere to put it, you know. And and J Glazer, who had given me an opportunity to train at his gym in preparation for getting that shot in the NFL, yeah. He said, look, there's a lot of athletes that feel the same way that you do, and I would imagine there's probably a lot of vets that feel that way when they when they when they leave. Yeah. So why don't we bring them together? And that's where MVP came apart, came about. We're literally merging vets and players. You know, not until this moment, like I've known that there's sort of commonality among the two between the two communities in terms of like the post their post-career and some of the challenges that they face, but it didn't occur to me until this moment that MVP is more than just about the veterans, it's about both we serve the athletes as well, you know. And and and and of course, I wouldn't say look, we would never compare the battlefield to the ball field, but sports and and going to war, completely different. It's a different type of sacrifice. Like it just is, and everybody knows that. And so a lot of times athletes, and I appreciate this, they're like, hey, I don't want to, I don't want to compare right anything I did to that, because that's different, you know. I'm like, yeah, but you don't realize there's a lot of guys you could help, right, if you would just show up and and and kind of be there because you're gonna have those similarities. And then they show up and the athletes realize that they actually need it too. You know what I mean? It's right. They don't want to admit it's something, and it's they got a lot of them, got a lot of pride. I'm I'm one of those people, but it's like they need it too. And then they're like, okay, this vet, maybe this vet, boom, because we dealt with a lot of guys and deal with a lot of guys that they spent time living in a homeless shelter, you know, in LA after getting out of the military because they came from a really bad childhood and situation. The military gave them purpose and and a family, and then they get out and they're right back in that old situation, they didn't know how to deal with it. Sure, yeah. But then you got those guys up in the gym with people like Tony Gonzalez and Randy Couture and some of these like Hall of Fame athletes. Yeah, and then the the veteran, that veteran is like helping them see something a little bit different. It's kind of crazy to think about, but you know, and that's not just the big famous athletes, it's all the athletes, but they they need it too. Yeah, we got uh 14 or so chapters around the country, right? Uh we meet up in the gym on a weekly basis, we we we train together, and then we huddle up afterwards, and it's just peer-to-peer coaching, you know, open form. Um anything's on the table. And and it's just a place where we can, just like in the locker room, sir, or the team room, you can just talk about it, you know, good, bad, and ugly. Awesome. And uh, and that's what it is. And so uh, folks who want to get involved, either, you know, as a veteran or an athlete, yeah. Do they need to live in one of those areas? We have virtual chapter as well, so you don't have to live there. Go to vetsandplayers.org to learn more about merging vets and players.