Thanks to Umenyiora more and more Nigerians are getting opportunities in American Football

Thanks to Osi Umenyiora, twice a Super Bowl winner with New York Giants, more and more Nigerians are playing the NFL.

Since retiring, Umenyiora has worked on talent identification for NFL in Nigeria. 

Taking advantage of the NFL’s International Player Pathway programme which opened the door for Efe Obada now at Washington Commanders, and Germany’s Jakob Johnson at Las Vegas Raiders.

The programme guarantees a place in a practice squad for those selected as they learn the game, and though high-profile code-swappers such as Christian Wade grab the attention, it gives opportunity to untapped areas.

The programme began in 2017 and the early contenders came mostly from Europe. But the class of 2023, selected after an international combine — in which players are put together to be tested — at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in October, has a dominant nation.

Of the 12 players, six hail from Australia, France, Germany, Mexico or New Zealand; the other half come from Nigeria: Basil Chijioke Okoye, Chukwuebuka Jason Godrick, Kenneth Odumegwu, David Ebuka Agoha, Kehinde Oginni Hassan and Haggai Chisom Ndubuisi.

They started training in Arizona in January and will showcase themselves to scouts next month.

The identification of talent in Nigeria, which has the seventh-highest population in the world, has been driven by Umenyiora, through NFL Africa and The Uprise. 

Umenyiora, 41, was born in London and raised in Nigeria before moving to Alabama, taking up American football and winning two Super Bowls with New York Giants.

In retirement he took to philanthropy in the land of his parents, but “the problems just seemed to be insurmountable”. Noting the number of players of African heritage in the NFL, he turned his attention to bringing American football to Africa — and camps across the continent — which would then take Africa to American football.

“The thing that separates American football and the NFL from pretty much every other sport is the variety of positions, the variety of body shapes,” he says. “You can be big, tall, small, short, there’s a position for you there.

And then on top of that, outside of the quarterback position, the requisite skill to be able to advance to the highest level. If you have the athletic ability, you can learn the game rather quickly.

“Think about some of the things that we’ve done, getting players who’ve never played the game before on practice squads and then next thing you know they’re on regular rosters, they’re making a bunch of money within like two years. Can you imagine a guy who’s never played soccer before playing for Manchester United at 23, and he’s never kicked a ball? It just can’t happen in any other sport.”

The NFL’s expansion is most evident from the international series, with London and Germany hosting five games next season. For Umenyiora, an increased diversity of talent would hammer home that global growth, citing the effect that Hakeem Olajuwon and Yao Ming had on the NBA in Nigeria and China respectively.

“You have to have players from international markets actually in the NFL, and that gives people within those countries a reason to watch, a reason to pay attention,” Umenyiora says. “We have to find a way to get star players from different countries into the NFL. And I think over these next couple of years, you’re definitely going to see that.”

Umenyiora says we are “five to ten” years from having domestic play in Nigeria, given infrastructural challenges, although flag football could be the gateway version of the sport.

The hard work does not stop for IPP prospects. Even if you make it to the NFL, there are practice squads, waivers, contract releases, cut-throat standards and small windows of opportunity. But what opportunities these are: Ndubuisi, who spent time with Arizona Cardinals last year, was selling goods on the street before he took part in The Uprise.

“He wouldn’t be the only one,” Umenyiora says. “You look at a situation like that, a guy who was doing that and then you know, in a couple of months’ time he’s signed to the Arizona Cardinals practice squad with a guaranteed amount of money in his pocket. You can’t even fathom what that journey is like.”