COLUMBIA — He’s here because of a three-second clip.
OK, maybe it isn’t that simple. Yet there’s no disputing that ever since viral video snippets featuring 6-foot-7, 305-pound Neff Giwa outjumping, outrunning and looking pretty good in the first pass-blocking drills of his life began popping, the power brokers of college football had to mop the drool off their hastily printed pages about rugby and a town called Cashel, home to less than 5,000 in south Ireland.
The potential — make that, POTENTIAL — glistened so much that anyone was willing to invest the time and effort into teaching a player that has quite literally not played football (the way Americans know it) to play football. South Carolina won the lottery, and Giwa reported for spring ball, which led into fall camp.
He had no wide-eyed stare of those forced to drink from a fire hose. He was rather relaxed, although he of course recognized the vast amount of information he’s ingested since arrival.
Because it isn’t just about picking up the rules of the game, then the nuances and specifics needed to play this spot in this offense on this down. It’s about coming to a new country and a university where most everyone knows who he is and he doesn’t know the first thing about them.
“I mean, from the start of my journey then, when I actually got here, a lot’s happened, you know what I’m saying? My main objective is to get my foot in the door and work hard,” Giwa said. “I wouldn’t say feeling overwhelmed but just feeling grateful every time I come into the building and seeing the NFL helmets on the walls, the past players that have played at USC and stuff like that.
“Just being here, it’s overwhelming in the sense of you can’t believe that it’s happening. That you’re here to build something, you know what I mean?”
Giwa — given name Oluwanifemi, reflecting Nigerian heritage — is the son of two health-service professionals. He’s already two years older than most college freshmen, helping explain why he’s already learned how to combine all of his physical traits.
Someone this big shouldn’t move this fast. Except in athletics. Which is where he was when he recorded a 4.88 in the 40-yard dash and broad jumped 9 feet, 10 inches.
Again, this was being used on the rugby field. But Brandon Collier, founder of Premier Prospects International, saw Giwa and knew he could be the next man through the pipeline of European talent that desired to play American college football.
Giwa calls him a mentor. Collier showed him games online, and he already had some fundamentals from playing 17 years of rugby, so it didn’t take much more than a nudge.
Linebacker Justin Okoronkwo is in his second season at USC and third season of college ball. From Germany, having grown up doing gymnastics and soccer, he helped get Giwa interested in the Gamecocks.
“He hadn’t played a snap of football at all. I also started pretty late, so I kind of see some similarities,” Okoronkwo said. “I definitely helped out just talking to him, like how the transition for me was coming to college. And I would definitely be his guy here if he needs anything.”
The transition of Ireland to the U.S. was rather easy, even getting him to famously hot Columbia (it might get to 75 degrees on the hottest summer day in Cashel, something a Columbian can experience in mid-February).
But even knowing what they were going to teach him, it still took a lot of dawning for each coach to see just how much Giwa needed to learn.
“We did kickoff return today, and I just grabbed him and, ‘OK, when the other team scores, they kick. It’s like rugby, but they put the ball on the tee and they kick to us and now you would be on the other team, our team is blocking and the other team is running downfield covering a kick or punt,’” USC coach Shane Beamer said. “‘We are on defense now, and if you’re on the punt return team, we’ve just stopped them. Now you’re going out there and we’re trying to block the punt, but if we don’t block this punt, now you’re blocking to try and help us score.’”
Cripes, where are the flash cards?
“Yeah, it’s just everything’s brand-new, from how you put your equipment on to knowing what a D-gap is,” offensive line coach Randy Clements said. “It’s just all teaching him right now.”
It’s the strength of the room and the team that the other players saw just how lost Giwa could be if nobody helped him out. They’ve all raised their hands quite a few times.
“Neff is a great dude. I mean, I kind of started off with him as a kid. I started taking him under my wing as an older guy trying to make him actually learn what football is,” lineman Nolan Hay said. “I’ll meet with him every now and then to just watch a game, kind of explain what penalty is which and explain what first down is and everything like that.”
“He’s never played football, so you’ve got to tell him every little thing,” said edge rusher Caleb Herring, who has yet to try knocking Giwa off his feet since he’s still baby-stepping through the playbook. “But whenever it came to workouts, watching him work out, he was always one of the top people. He’s going to be a guy once he figures it out.”
That does beg the question. Will that be this year? Could he factor in on the offensive line or elsewhere?
“Neff’s a guy, because of his size and his athleticism, that we need to, in my opinion, if he can help us, we need to figure out a way to get him on the field. It might not just be offensive line. I think that’s a big ask,” Beamer said. “But at the same time, because he’s got size, because he can run, because he’s such a hard worker and a great young man, special teams is an area that I think he can certainly figure in and do some things.”
Be still, hearts on either sideline. That monster coming off an edge on a beeline to block a kick?
Again, POTENTIAL.
But it has to be mixed with PATIENCE.
“It’s one thing doing it in the meeting room on the board and then walking through it, but when the live bullets get going and you have the contact, it’s going to be a whole different world for him. We know where he’s at,” Clements said. “We’re just taking it one day at a time and focusing on what we’ve got in front of us for the day. If we can kill that, then we can move on to the next thing.”
He’s working as hard as he can, learning as fast as he can. He hasn’t set a goal of playing by “this” date, but of course there’s no question he wants to play if possible.
It’s unfair, really, to expect so much from yes, an amazing physical specimen who looks born to play the game but who hasn’t actually, you know, played. Considering his list of college suitors, there are a lot of expectations once he’s given the all-clear to take the field.
That’s in the very back of Giwa’s mind. Every day is something else to learn. Mastering will come one day, not tomorrow.
“The other players are spending time with me outside of practice to try and watch film and get a better understanding of the game and stuff like that. For me, I feel like I’ve learned a lot in a short space of time so I’m very excited for what’s ahead,” he said. “They’ve made it feel like the only thing I have left to do is just work hard and do well.”