Life and the Game of Adjustments

Chima Okoli was a senior captain when the news broke. He recalls being summoned to an emergency “squad meeting” and told the shocking and horrifying details. He remembers with distaste the media horde that followed every movement of anyone involved with Penn State football. He thinks back on the student protests and the riots. And while he acknowledges the severity of the crimes committed and the lack of responsibility and accountability surrounding the situation, Okoli’s sadness involves his entire motivation for attending Penn State in the first place. “It broke me down. It broke my heart. That’s not what that school’s about. And the whole reason I went there is because it was a different model of doing things. And now it’s the smudge that will never come off.”

Most know the story of the Penn State football scandal by now. Assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of numerous counts of child molestation over a 15-year period during his time at Penn State, and several members of the administration and staff, including legendary head coach Joe Paterno, were involved as part of the investigation. Although Paterno didn’t receive legal punishment, he was fired due to the belief that he didn’t do enough to prevent the crimes from occurring. Paterno, the man who promised integrity and leadership when recruiting Okoli out of high school, had been removed as coach with four games left in Okoli's Penn State career.

“He definitely had a hard time [getting through the scandal],” says former teammate, co-captain and friend Quinn Barham, now a strength and conditioning coach for North Carolina State’s football team. “There was a point in time where he hated Penn State. People judged us when we would walk around in public wearing Penn State gear. It made us really doubt ourselves.”

It’s been four years since the scandal, and Chima Okoli is describing the play-by-play approach of an offensive lineman, but he might as well be teaching life lessons. “You see the center pointing everywhere; it’s like an orchestra, or directing traffic. Every offensive line play is three plays in one, because you never know what the defense will do. If the defense does this, we do this; if they shift to this we’ll do that. At any given time, any of those situations can occur. And you have to be ready for it.”

Football is a game of adjustments. For the players themselves, life is an even bigger game of adjustments, and Okoli has learned this at every turn of his football career, as well as in life.

Okoli was born in Virginia Beach in 1989, the fifth son of Nigerian immigrants, who came to the U.S. in search of a better life for themselves and for their children. Okoli says his father Emeka, who has several degrees and holds a Ph.D. in organizational and intercultural communication, is one of his greatest influences because of the choices he made for his family.

“My dad came to America with four children all under the age of 10 and $185. I look up to him because the odds were clearly stacked against him but, just to take that leap…that’s what a maverick is to me. He’s taught me that, if you have a problem, are you going to let that beat you, or are you going to overcome it?”

Okoli developed into a premier football talent late in his high school career. He can tell you from memory exactly how many tackles (85) and sacks (15) he recorded his senior year of high school, when he earned first-team Associated Press all-state honors.

Okoli says numerous top football universities took notice, and many of them offered promises of fame, girls and even financial compensation, which Okoli acknowledges now as clearly a violation of NCAA rules. In his decision over where to go, Okoli referred to his father for guidance. “My dad would always say ‘Football is a vehicle. Education is a priority.’” And the coach and school that emphasized education to Okoli were Paterno and Penn State.

“Coach Paterno told me, ‘We can’t give you all the stuff that those other guys are going to give you-but I’m going to make you a better man.’ That stuck with me.” Okoli says Paterno first took him to see the study hall and the computer lab when he first visited, rather than the athletic facilities or other on-campus or off-campus locations. Okoli says he was sold on the idea that Penn State was going to make him a “better man and a leader of [my] community.”

In Okoli’s bedroom there are several mementos from his football days at Penn State. A large poster of himself during a game hangs on the wall over his bed. A white jersey with a blue number 52 stitched on it rests pristine and pressed in a large frame. His helmet, however, lies rather unceremoniously on the floor near the closet. It still has some dirt in the faceguard, and there are numerous scratches, dents and marks on the crown. It was in this helmet that Okoli made his first major adjustment as a football player, switching from defensive line to offensive line, after not playing much his first few years as a Nittany Lion. “We both struggled together as backups until our senior years,” says Barham. “He almost wanted to quit football. But he stayed the course.”

By the end of his senior season in 2011, Okoli earned an honorable mention All-Big Ten nomination as an offensive lineman. His Nittany Lions finished the regular season 9-3 and got an invitation to play in the TicketCity Bowl in Dallas. However, the dominant story out of Penn State during his final year was about the scandal. Not the players. Not Okoli.

“The team’s first reaction was to not go to the bowl game,” Barham says. “We felt slighted. How can you punish us for something we didn’t do? But Chima’s a smart guy, he’s a forward thinker, he held it together.” Barham says Okoli helped the team see the bigger picture, and convinced them that playing the game was the right thing to do, both for themselves, and for the Penn State community.

After graduating from Penn State with two degrees, Okoli attempted to catch on with an NFL team as an offensive lineman. He went undrafted, but was invited to try out with the Seattle Seahawks at their rookie mini-camp in 2012. He wouldn’t make the team, however, and eventually left football for good.

At 6-foot-4, Okoli has the rare distinction of weighing nearly 300 pounds without seeming the least bit overweight or out of shape, even now, more than three years since playing football competitively. He says he has lost some movement in his right ankle, and his right pinky finger juts noticeably farther out away from his hand than his left pinky-which he attributes to years of trying to grab hold of other linemen down in the trenches. But he says he wouldn’t give back his time playing football for anything. “When I look back on it,” says Okoli, “what a beautiful experience. I got to play in front of 100,000 people.”

Okoli is now a second-year law student at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., with an interest in sports and entertainment law. He has made the adjustment from high-profile athletics to law seemingly as easily as he did when switching from defensive to offensive line. A law school professor of Okoli's says he is one of the most dedicated and focused students they’ve ever taught, and already possesses the quality of reassurance that makes clients trust that their lawyer has the capability and desire to protect them and their interests.

One might say those qualities come from Okoli’s experience as a football player whose primary goal was to protect his quarterback from outside harm. Others might note Okoli’s father instilled such values in him over the years. Okoli’s best friend and cousin, Eze, puts it in an even more transparent light. “Athletes are always used to winning. Their first failure is when they don’t make it into the league [NFL]. That’s when they may pull back from society, pull back from friends and get in a depressed state, because they’ve been winning all their life. But he chose a top career field. He wants to be a power figure.”

Okoli still uses his size from time to time, working a few nights a week as a bouncer at a club in D.C., all while a full-time law student. Okoli says his schedule can be fairly hectic, and admits sleeping in the law school one night to finish a paper. For Okoli, working hard is par for the course.

“He loves to work, loves to grind,” Barham says. “He pushes himself to get through something, and when he puts his mind to it, he’s going to go get it.”