Sam McGuffie, who played in two NFL preseason games for the Oakland Raiders in 2013, made the U.S. bobsled team for the 2015-16 World Cup season as a push athlete.
McGuffie, 26, was most heralded as a University of Michigan running back in 2008. He transferred to Rice after one season in Ann Arbor, wasn’t drafted by the NFL but signed with the Raiders in 2013 and played in two preseason games.
McGuffie bounced around on NFL practice squads and in the CFL before turning to bobsled.
His story is similar to that of Johnny Quinn, the 2014 Olympic bobsledder most famous for getting locked in a bathroom in Sochi.
Quinn also played Division I college football and in NFL preseason games as a wide receiver. He began bobsledding in 2010-11 and became the second NFL player to compete in the Winter Games, joining Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, who was an Albertville 1992 bobsledder.
Neither Quinn nor Walker won an Olympic medal.
If McGuffie stays on the U.S. bobsled team into the 2017-18 season, he’ll have a shot to make the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic team.
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