Mike Peterson

Linebacker

Growing up as a boy in Alachua, Mike Peterson always wanted to go to a football camp.

Florida, FSU, whoever. Didn’t matter. He just thought it would be great to attend a camp.

“But I wouldn’t dare ask my mom for $200 or $300 to send me to camp,” he said.

The feeling stayed with him.

And in 2004, he started the Mike Peterson Foundation and among its purposes was to provide a free football camp for kids in the Gainesville and Alachua area called the BRING IT Football Camp.

“I always told myself if I ever had the chance I was going to have a free camp for kids,” he said.

Peterson spent 13 years in the NFL before retiring and returning to UF as an undergraduate assistant under Will Muschamp. He finished up his degree and this year was named linebackers coach at South Carolina.

“About halfway through my career, I realized I wasn’t going to play forever,” he said. “So I started really paying attention to how coaches did things.”

Peterson lives in Columbia, S.C., with his wife and two boys.