Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
Nigerian Nightmare
is living a dreamTHE Nigerian Nightmare was having one of his own. He did not like this, not at all. He was exhausted, and his body hurt all over, and he was just about at his breaking point. He decided he was not a fan of this strange, violent American sport. He wanted out. He'd had enough.
"I wanted to quit," he said in his soft accent, seeming so gentle now. "There were many times when I wanted to quit."
His American friends would always talk him back, would always convince him to stay with it.
Christian Okoye had joined the football team at Azusa Pacific because he felt that the Nigerian government had kept him off its Olympic track team on purpose. Now, he would show them, would take out his frustration on the football field, would put this boundless athletic package to good use.
But then, it turned out to be not nearly as easy as he'd imagined.
"Tony (Akpan) will find out," he said, knowingly, admiringly, of his countryman's much-celebrated attempt to adapt to the gridiron.
And what did he so dislike about it? Well, there was the brutal pace of a football fall camp, always topped off by one thing in particular: "The contact," Okoye said. He didn't like it, not at all.
The contact? Is this the same Okoye, the bruising, battering All-Pro running back for the Kansas City Chiefs? The guy who never met a defender he'd tried to avoid, the African wrecking ball? The man who thought that the shortest distance between himself and the end zone was a straight line?
Yeah, same guy.
Turns out he never liked getting hit.
So he's twice as tough as we thought.
And he played, played in the pros for seven years, slamming into that line again and again and again. Taking every hit, and giving them back twice as hard.
"I know it will catch up to me," he said. He's seen too many old players not to know.
But it turned out he liked football after all, the friendships, the guys. There's nothing like the camaraderie of a football team. His appearance at yesterday's UH spring practice session brought it all home for him again.
He smiled at the memories.
Okoye is retired now, living in California, not too far from Azusa, where it all began. He has his own business. And a foundation. He wants to help kids, he said, to show them how far a poor kid from Nigeria has come.
"Kids are not bad," he said. "Sometimes they just think they are bad." So he goes all over, now, trying to convince them otherwise. He's in town to put on a clinic, and a golf tournament. It's quite a life he's had, since he picked up football at age 23.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com