Colorado University Athletics
Sons Of Immigrants, These Three Buffs Drew Strength From Nigerian Culture
December 23, 2016 | Football
BOULDER — There's something American about a father and son tossing around a football on the front lawn. For many boys, football is the ultimate bonding experience with parents.
But for three of Colorado's impact players on the 2016 defense, the experience was entirely different. Defensive backs Afolabi Laguda and Chidobe Awuzie and linebacker Kenneth Olugbode make up a unique group of first-generation Americans on the CU team. All six of their parents came from Nigeria and all attribute much of their success — on and off the field — to their upbringing within the Nigerian culture.
So how did three young men who didn't necessarily grow up with the game from infancy become such outstanding players on the football field?
For all three, other sports such as soccer and basketball gave them their first taste of athletic competition and the passion that comes with it.
A family affair
Laguda's first taste of football came from watching his oldest brother Charles play. The eldest sibling of four, Charles would go on to play wide receiver at Auburn.
"My oldest brother got into football and I and my other brother just copied everything that he did," said Laguda, who transferred to Colorado in 2015 after one year at Butler Community College. "He started playing football and we started begging my parents, saying that we wanted to try out for football too."
Eventually Laguda's parents allowed him and his other older brother, Lateef, to begin playing football. Lateef attended college on an athletic scholarship and received two degrees from Georgia State, where he also played receiver.
This season, Laguda finished second on the team in tackles with 80, including 49 unassisted, along with an interception, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.
The story is similar for Olugbode. He and his two older brothers began playing football after a Pop Warner coach approached them outside of a doctor's office. His parents were supportive, Olugbode says, because "they just wanted to get us out of the house."
Olugbode's mother, Josephine, pointed to a need to release energy as the main reason she allowed her sons to play football.
"I had three boys in a span of five years," Josephine said. "They have so much energy. I needed to make sure that these boys ran around and got tired so that they would sleep when they got home."
Josephine remembers how her sons became involved.
"A football coach came up to us and said, 'Your oldest son is great at basketball, can he play for us?'" Josephine recalled. "I said, 'No, I have three sons. You can't take one, you have to take all three.' That's how they started."
Olugbode initially played running back and safety when he first started the game, but moved to linebacker in sixth grade. He has played the position ever since, including at Bellarmine Prep in San Jose, Calif., where he played before being recruited to Colorado by Mike MacIntyre.
Olugbode will cap his career in fine fashion, as he finished the regular season as CU's leading tackler with 130 (90 solo), and also had two interceptions, three fumble recoveries and a forced fumble. One of his biggest plays of the season came when he returned a fumble 10 yards for a touchdown to provide what proved to be the game-winning score in CU's Pac-12 South-clinching win over Utah.
Awuzie's start in football came about a bit differently. His older brother, Dubem, played soccer and basketball and Awuzie followed suit. He did not begin playing football until he was 11 years old.
Awuzie said they used to play football in his neighborhood but other kids would become frustrated because of his intensity and the accidental injuries he inflicted upon them.
"As a kid, I was really rough," said Awuzie, also recruited to Colorado by MacIntyre out of a San Jose high school, Oak Grove. "So a lot of kids would get mad at me for hurting them by accident when we were playing. So when I started playing football, it's a really physical sport and it was something that I felt comfortable with. I felt like I could be myself and express myself."
Considered to be a likely high-round pick in next April's NFL Draft, Awuzie recorded 60 tackles this season (48 solo). The four-year starter also registered four sacks, one interception, two forced fumbles and one fumble recovery, in addition to a blocked field goal against UCLA.
Passion persists
It's easy for children to begin playing a sport, but how do they become among the elite at their level? The answers of hard work and dedication are standard. But there were other factors that led to these three Buffs becoming successful Division I student-athletes on and off of the field.
Each of the players' parents immigrated to America. Their families moved to a foreign country, bringing forth a set of challenges that most others in America can not comprehend: a new language, a new culture and a new way of life.
Each family started from scratch and planted roots into the soil of the land of opportunity, displaying a work ethic that quickly became instilled in their children.
"It's built into our culture," Awuzie explained. "In Nigerian families, academics come first but we really found sports as another avenue to be good at something else. Definitely academics first, our parents have a high expectation of us. But athletically too, we have a high expectation of ourselves."
Laguda agreed. His work ethic comes from family and his understanding of how hard his parents had to work to succeed.
"My parents being immigrants, they worked hard for everything and they already had that work ethic in them," Laguda said. "That trickled down to me and my siblings. Football definitely enforced that discipline that my parents had already instilled in me."
Josephine Olugbode tried to teach her children by example, telling her children to work hard but also encouraging them to look at all that she and her husband had built themselves.
"We tell our children to work very hard," Josephine said. "We don't even really have to tell them. They see it. They see how hard mom and dad have to work as immigrants every single day so that we can provide food for them, for our children."
She taught her children to succeed by way of "the four E's:" energy, energizers, edge and execution.
Josephine says the fourth "E" — execution — is the most important.
"Without execution, there nothing," she said.
It all goes back to home
After understanding where they came from, It's not hard to understand how three little boys who did not grow up throwing the football with dad or religiously studying NFL players on Sunday became three of the biggest defensive forces in the Pac-12.
Laguda, Olugbode and Awuzie can't imagine their lives without the sport.
For Laguda, it has given him confidence.
"Football has honestly changed my life," Laguda said. " More than anything, it just made me comfortable with myself as a person."
For Awuzie, it has been a critical supplement to a life already cemented in bedrock values.
"Football has done so much for me," he said. "It's brought me closer to God and close to my family. It's given me a set of values and a set of friends that I'll always cherish."
For Olugbode, it's given him inspiration to be the best and continue to pave the way that others have already begun to lay.
"My mom always said, 'I don't care what you do, you'd better be the best at it,'" he said. "So, I would look at the 'Nigerian Nightmare,' Christian Okoye (a former Kansas City Chiefs standout). He was the first Nigerian to set the roots in football. Everyone in my family knows who that is. They say, 'You play football? You'd better be like Christian Okoye.'"
These three Buffs make up a special group of first-generation Americans who are proud of their Nigerian heritage and carry it with them every single time they step onto the football field. Although the sport is not necessarily ingrained into their DNA, the stories of victory and strength that are carried through their heritage embody what the sport of football is all about: perseverance, tenacity and grit.
"It's OK to lose, you learn a lot of lessons, but you go out there and fight," Josephine Olugbode said. "At the end of the day, whoever wants it the most walks away with it. But we don't lose games, we always win."
