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Coming out of Ohio's Centerville High School as a four-star recruit, Odenigbo was one of the highest-rated players ever to sign with Northwestern. He was the top player in Ohio, a member of the U.S. Under-19 National Football Team and competed in the Under Armor All-American Game. All of those accolades are certainly impressive, but the most impressive of all: he only started playing football during his sophomore year. His "first love" was soccer, he says, and he played up until sixth grade when the practices and games interfered with his parents' work schedules. "Soccer's like your first girlfriend," he says. "Even though you guys broke up, you still have a thing for her." Then Odenigbo turned to track, where he excelled, eventually anchoring Centerville's 4x200 relay team in a third-place finish at the state meet.
At six-foot-three and under 250 pounds, Odenigbo may have too slight a frame to play defensive line at the next level. Teams, though, will undoubtedly see his athletic ability as too much to pass up. In a mock-NFL-combine this spring, Odenigbo recorded a 126-inch broad jump, a 34-inch聽vertical and runs a reported 4.72 40-yard dash. When compared to 2014 prospects, Odenigbo's broad jump was the second best amongst defensive ends. His <a href=http://www.avanttravel.com/page.php?sale=Madame-Butterfly-Louboutin>Madame Butterfly Louboutin</a> vertical would have put him at 11th best and his 40 time was the聽eighth fastest.
Early in his life, football was never really an option for Odenigbo, the first member of his family to be born in the U.S. His parents, Thomas and Linda, were both born in Nigeria and knew nothing about the sport. They didn't let his older brother, who was also born in Nigeria, play because they thought it was too dangerous. Football also took up a ton of time and, according to Odenigbo, the Nigerian attitude toward education is "school, school, school, study, study, study. You need to get a 3.5 <GPA> or I won't let you play." There came a point in time when, he says, he couldn't escape the prospect of playing football. First the pressure came from his friends. "You're a big, black, Nigerian dude," they'd tell him. "Those are all indications of a football player, man. Ifeadi, you're a freak athlete." Then people started talking to him at track meets after they saw him run in his skin-tight speed suit. "Dude, you're big as hell, bro. You play football?" people asked him. "Nah," he would respond. "You got to be playing football," people kept telling him. "Dude, you're <a href=http://www.radiorcs.com/page.php?sale=Kate-Spade-Make-Up-Bag>Kate Spade Coupon</a> a football player trying to do a track sport. That's not you." Eventually he gave in, starting out as a "JV All-Star." And soon after he started, he was ready to give it up. "It sucked man," he says. "I almost quit. Sophomore year I was just getting rocked, man." His biggest challenge, he says, was "getting over that phase of being afraid of hits." He calls himself "tentative and soft" and it wasn't until about nine or ten games into the season that he finally understood that aspect of football. But that fear of physical confrontation actually helped him find his niche on the field. "Originally, I was a pass rusher because the coaches knew I was afraid of contact. So that's why I'm such a good pass rusher, which is kind of funny. My coach told me, 鈥榊o, yo, yo, just pretend like <the>lineman]'s got diseases or something. <a href=http://www.radiorcs.com/page.php?sale=Kate-Spade-Kent-Stevie>Kate Spade Kent Stevie</a> Don't let him touch you. If he touches you, you've got to say no and be paranoid.'" Once it all clicked for him, there was no slowing down. His physical skillset alone caused him to leap onto the radars of some of the top schools in the country such as Stanford, Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and USC. "When I was getting recruited in high school and getting all of these offers, I was like, 鈥業 don't know why I'm getting these offers. I really don't think I'm that good, but I'll take them anyway,'" he says. The thing is, he was that good. Whether he knew it or not, Odenigbo was making waves around the country. When Odenigbo ran down and caught current Ohio State star quarterback not once, but聽, in a high school game, it was clear that he could play at an elite level.
