Former ND receiver Michael Floyd gets back into the swing of life
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Five years removed from his last NFL reception and four years after his most recent waiver-wire transaction, Michael Floyd smiles when he says he doesn’t miss football.
Not that the 33-year-old father of three has fallen out of love with the sport in which he remains the most decorated wide receiver in Notre Dame history.
“I usually only watch it now if someone I know is playing,” said ND’s career leader in receptions (271), receiving yards (3,686), TD receptions (37) and 100-yard games (17). “I think Rudy [tight end Kyle Rudolph] is the last one from our class. But I’m happy where I left off and happy with my life and how things ended.
“I got to live my NFL career for eight years, so now I’m taking care of my three kids and my wife. Doing everything and loving it. And golfing. I love golfing.”
On Monday he golfed for charity in a relentless drizzle back at Notre Dame at the Warren Golf Course in the second annual Golic SubPar Celebrity Golf Classic. The event raised more than $100,000 for the second year in a row for South Bend-area charities.
Three of his former Irish teammates — Rudolph, quarterback Dayne Crist and center Braxston Cave — were a part of the fivesome that took top honors, though they were roundly booed at the awards ceremony.
Mike Golic Jr., one of the drivers of the event and a member of the vaunted 2008 Irish recruiting class with Floyd and the others, suggested the good-natured booing was the anticipation that they might take the term bragging rights too literally in the next year.
As for Floyd’s round?
“I think we, as a group, did well, but I don’t count my score when it’s raining out,” he said. “I’m a whole different player when the weather is good. I’m pretty good in those conditions, I would say.”
Back home in the Twin Cities area, where Floyd evolved into a five-star prospect at Cretin-Derham Hall High, he’s a real estate agent and picking up more domestic duties with daughter Cienna (9), son Michael Jr. (3) and daughter Liv (1) as wife Sydney returns to school to pursue a law degree.
“Cienna is the only one that’s old enough to be into sports,” Floyd said. “And she’s into tennis. We're trying to get her into more. But no one ever forced me to play anything. You just kind of go your own way and see what you do like, what you don’t like. And so, as long as she’s being active and enjoys tennis with her friends, I’m totally fine with that.”
He’s also fine with the redemption/repentance narrative that once was so prominent in his life story starting to shrink into a footnote. DUI arrests in 2011 and 2016 threatened to truncate both his college and NFL careers.
Floyd rebounded from the first to post an ND record 100-catch season in 2011 in his senior season, then was selected in the first round the following spring by the Arizona Cardinals. In December of 2016 it happened again, and the Cardinals released him shortly thereafter.
He’d go on to get signed by five teams over the next three years but only amassed 24 of his 266 career catches during that span.
Perhaps more valuable was owning his missteps and starting over back home where his star first rose and he still has a burger named after him at The Nook in St. Paul (topped with corned beef, cream cheese, pickles and mustard for $14.75).
Right after football ended, Floyd jumped into an adult basketball league for fun, then quickly retired from it.
“It’s too much on my body,” he said, smiling. “My body doesn’t recover like it used to. But I’m glad I did it, because that’s where I had conversations about real estate. All these guys started talking about investment properties and being a real estate agent and just owning stuff.
“I like it, because not only can you own something, but also you get a chance to help people. Getting home ownership is not renting and actually putting their money to work. It’s different every single day. You’re not sitting in a cubicle. You’re meeting people. It’s a relationship job, so I enjoy it.”
One of his newest relationships is with Notre Dame second-year head coach Marcus Freeman, whom Floyd met for the first time in mid-May when Freeman spoke to the Notre Dame Club of Minnesota.
Floyd still couldn’t name any of Freeman’s wide receivers in the 2023 Irish roster without a cheat sheet, but his new connection with Freeman has coaxed him to plan to take his entire family to multiple Irish home football games this coming season.
“I hadn’t been to a game in about four years,” Floyd said. “But I never lost touch with the people. Jimmy Clausen. Golden Tate. And then all the guys in my own recruiting class. There were 20-plus of us that came in together at 18 years old.
“Since then, we’ve been super close. Regardless of if we don’t talk every single day, if I go to Chicago and meet one of my classmates, we start off just like we saw each other two days ago. Nothing's really changed, and the friendship is still there.
“That comes with the people that are in our class, but I also think that’s just how Notre Dame is. Just keeping a tight-knit family and keeping the communication. And if the communication isn’t there for a while, you start back where you left off.”
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