Two-time Super Bowl winner Osi Umenyiora is paving the way for African athletes to join the NFL

African players and American football, in Osi Umenyiora’s opinion, make a great mix. Despite not being able to play football until he was around 15 years old after immigrating to the US from Nigeria, he had a remarkable 12-year career in the National Football League (NFL), winning two Super Bowls with the New York Giants.

The 40-year-old athlete, who was born in the UK, is now searching for talent that can assist turn American football into a more well-liked and celebrated game throughout the world.

Osi Umenyiora, a two-time Pro Bowler, did not need his recruits to have any prior knowledge of American football when he dispatched scouts to Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria to identify the next generation of African talent for the NFL.

Image Credits – Viraltips

Umenyiora’s primary goal was to identify the top young athletes in Africa and persuade anybody who would listen to give his favourite sport a try instead of continuing with other activities like soccer, basketball, or rugby.

Thankfully, the NFL decided to invite Umenyiora and 49 prospects to their own camp, which was held at Ghana’s Right to Dream Academy on June 22 and 23, in order to select the best players for their International Player Pathway (IPP) program because the calibre of the best players at his Uprise camps was high enough.

NFL Africa, the league’s official platform for showcasing African athletes and forging ties with the continent, conducted its first official camp there last month. The NFL’s International Player Pathway, which offers athletes from outside the US and Canada the chance to win a seat on an NFL club, was in attendance, and scouts were there to choose the top 49 possibilities to enter.

Twelve of the prospects were developed by Ezekiel Ansah’s foundation, while four were from Jeremiah Owusu-prior Koramoah’s camp in Ghana and four were trained by Umenyiora.

CJ Okoye, a 6-foot-8 offensive lineman from Nigeria, was one of the NFL camp’s most impressive participants. He barely made it out of Umenyiora’s earliest Uprise camps as a basketball convert, but the former New York Giants player noticed something special in the 20-year-old that he knew he could work with.

Image Credits – ESPN

“He didn’t test well in the drills [at The Uprise], according to Umenyiora, who spoke to ESPN. The issue is that the results won’t be all that spectacular when you test them since they have never performed those workouts before and it takes a different sort of training to carry them out successfully. But when he is in a scenario where there is competition, he stands out. So, after seeing him compete, I figured he was definitely worth a shot”.

Football should be recognized as a realistic choice for the next generation of African players, regardless of whether their parents sent them to the US at a young age or brought them up on the continent.

According to Damani Leech, chief operating officer of NFL International, “I think our focus and what we can control is finding and nurturing talent that can make it into the NFL, or younger talent that can move into our NFL Academy curriculum and system that’s located in London.”

“That is our top priority right now. We anticipate and hope that by establishing this route to the NFL, [the organization’s presence in Africa] would encourage localities, governments, and nations to invest in the game and establish a system and framework for football in many nations.”

 

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