Long Journey to Signing Day
On Wednesday morning, Franklin Agbasimere will sign a Letter of Intent to play football for Missouri. In June, he will move from Montverde, FL to Columbia. Of the twenty-some players Missouri will sign, Agbasimere--by far--would have been considered the most unlikely just a year ago. In fact, of the more than two thousand players who will sign Division One letters this week, perhaps none was more of a long shot than the linebacker from Montverde Academy.
Three years ago, Franklin Agbasimere had never played football. And that doesn't even begin to justify his limited exposure to the game.
Advertisement
"What I was taught on TV," he says of his knowledge of the game.
He watched highlights and some games on ESPN at his home in Lagos, Nigeria.
"The Ravens," he said when asked of his favorite team. "That was when Ed Reed and Ray Lewis were on the defense team."
In that short quote, you can get an idea not only of Agbasimere's football inexperience, but also of the nuances of the English language he is still picking up. Agbasimere grew up in Lagos, Nigeria.
"We don't play football in Nigeria," he said.
Finding Franklin
It was basketball that put Agbasimere on the path to football and to Wednesday morning. He attended a basketball camp in Lagos in 2011.
Ricardo Dickerson knew of the basketball camps in Africa, run by the Ejike Ugboaja Foundation. He wanted to add football to them. Dickerson had begun working with former Penn State and Washington Redskins linebacker Lavar Arrington with a company called Xtreme Procision. Arrington launched the company in December 2010 with a series of detailed videos and apparel designed to illustrate training techniques visually for athletes. Dickerson handles XP's international outreach. In 2012, that led him to Lagos, Nigeria, where he held a football camp.
"One of his friends was telling me about Franklin. When I saw him, Franklin, he was very athletic, could move. When I saw him moving around, I told him, you might be able to be a safety or a linebacker," Dickerson said. "The one thing that kind of stood out to me with Franklin was he spoke very, very well. He's smart. I was trying to teach him different things, he picked a lot of stuff up really quick.
"He was smart. I was trying to teach him the different coverages, teach him blitzes, what a linebacker's supposed to do and he naturally picked a lot of that stuff up."
Dickerson had a vision. He wanted to take kids from countries where football didn't exist and give them a chance to play in the United States. There were plenty of hurdles.
"Once I got a chance to actually see the kids over there and see their living conditions, it pushed me. Because you get way more no's in these situations than you get a yes. You get way more, 'Ah, I don't know, I've never played before,'" Dickerson said. "But I think now people are starting to see what can happen if you give these kids an opportunity. And so that's what I've been trying to do since 2011. Just try. Just try and you never know what can happen."
Dickerson talked to Agbasimere about moving from Lagos to the United States. He would have two years to play high school football.
"This is not about the NFL. This is about getting these kids, getting them an opportunity. They've never played before so that's, like, so far-fetched, like, I don't even think about that," Dickerson said. "The story of these kids being able to beat the odds. We talk about kids here growing up in inner cities, just imagine coming over here never playing the game before. These kids putting a helmet on for the first time. That, to me, is just an amazing accomplishment in itself."
Agbasimere was one of the ones willing to make the move. To hear him talk about it, it sounds more like he moved across the street than across the ocean.
"I met with the coach and he liked me. We did some drills and he was really impressed with what he saw so he said he was going to keep in touch with me," Agbasimere said. "He was going to get back to me after he gets back to the United States, that he would want me to come down here and play football if my people were going to agree with that. I was like okay, I just talked to my parents and they were all fine with it.
"Actually it wasn't that hard. My parents, they're like, once you know you really want to do this then they gave me the go ahead."
The next step was figuring out where Agbasimere could play and attend school. Dickerson knew Walter Banks, a coach at Montverde Academy, a boarding school in Florida.
"They put together these camps and they kind of find the cream of the crop from these camps and then they try to find them places to go to school in the United States," Brian Treweek, the head coach at Montverde until the program was disbanded following this past season, said. "We were fortunate enough to have connections with Ricardo and Lavar and they sent us these guys."
Football is one thing. One look at Agbasimere--6-foot-2, 220 pounds, a V-shaped upper body that looks like it was sculpted out of granite--is enough to see the athletic potential. A reported 4.45 seconds in the 40-yard dash, a 345-pound bench press, 550-pound squat, 41-foot triple jump and 20-foot long jump back up that initial impression. But making the move from Nigeria to Florida without any family or established support system? How do you judge if a teenager is ready for that?
"That's a great point. Sometimes you get guys that get into these boarding school type situations and they just get homesick. It's something that you worry about," Treweek said. "But we had no issues with him. It does take a certain amount of maturity to be able to handle that situation and he handled it well. He never had an issue."
"The difference isn't that much because Lagos is like a big city. That's the biggest city in Nigeria, really, really populated. There's a lot of people there, foreigners come in and go out. It wasn't that tough of a difference. The academic difference, my school back home there and the one I'm in here now, I had to adjust when I came here, but now I'm good," Agbasimere said. "At first it was kind of hard, but I kind of got used to it."
The Making of a Prospect
To say Agbasimere was raw when he arrived at Montverde would be putting it kindly. Most of his football knowledge came from highlights on YouTube and ESPN.
"First day he shows up, we're thinking, 'Geez, this guy could be something special.' Just because he's got all the physical attributes that you're looking for. He's a specimen," Treweek said. "He looked great, but then when we started to get him into practice, he's raw. He'd never played the game, didn't know anything about it. That first day, probably the first couple weeks, he was just trying to figure everything out. He just had no clue. Obviously, he had no technique. It was a learning experience."
Dickerson tells a story relayed to him by Banks about Abdul Bello, another product of XP who played at Montverde and will sign with Florida State this week. Banks said the first time Bello put on his shoulder pads, he put them on backwards. Agbasimere managed to dress himself, but his first practice began ominously.
"The very first day I had my shoulder pads on I came out on the practice field," Agbasimere said. "We had our running back with the ball. He runs past me, then I have to tap him so he could stop. I didn't want to hit him because he was my teammate so I had to tap him. I touched him but he kept running so my coach kind of yelled at me: 'You can't be nice. You can't be nice, you need to hit somebody.' So I was like, 'Okay, if that's what it takes.' The next time I hit him, I hit him so hard he had to drop the ball. From there, my teammates started calling me Smash. That's how that came."
Along with a new nickname, the potential was there. But that's all it was.
"Physically I knew that he could. He looks the part. I didn't have any worry about that," Treweek said. "But would he be able to pick up the game and would he be good enough? Man, I'll tell you that first year, it was a learning experience and he was trying to figure out the game. But this year, the light went on and he figured it out and he was just playing faster than anybody else on the field."
"I credit these high school coaches like Walter Banks. I credit the coaches like that who can understand and see the vision," Dickerson said. "You're taking kids from another country that you know have no experience playing football. I'm a big dreamer. I expected the best. I believe in these kids. I believe in them.
"There are great coaches that try. They've been able to get the kid, not only to educate them, but to put the kids in a position that they'd never have had in a million years. There's no way possible...It's the coaches, man. They believe. Coaches give these kids of an opportunity. There's no way of knowing if they can really do it. It's just great. Look what we're doing with kids that have never, ever, ever touched a football giving them an opportunity to play football."
Unearthing a Hidden Gem
Agbasimere wasn't on many radars.
"I've never been to a camp. I've never been to any camp. I've been on the low key," he said. "Ever since I came here, I've never been to a combine, I've never been to a camp. I just, you know, played football in my school here and just trying to get my game together before the world sees me out there."
But Abdul Bello was a name known to college coaches. Standing 6-foot-5 and weighing 298 pounds tends to do that. Missouri was the first school to offer Bello a scholarship and Tiger assistant Brian Jones made multiple trips to Florida to recruit him.
Ultimately, Bello committed to the Seminoles last July over ten other reported offers. But Jones kept an eye on Montverde.
"He saw me on the practice field and he really wants to see my video," Agbasimere said. "He wants to see what I can do because he saw me go against Bello, he saw me run around the practice, I was on the special teams, the defense. He was really impressed with what he saw and that was when he started asking about me. Then he saw my video and the whole coaches like it and they were like, 'Oh, where has this guy been?'"
Missouri offered Agbasimere a scholarship. He went to watch the Tigers practice in Florida in preparation for the Citrus Bowl the last week in December.
"That was when I made up my mind that this is the type of school I want to be in," Agbasimere said. "None of the players knew I was there. I only met some of the coaches. I was standing on the side of the field watching everything happening. The whole chemistry was really, really good. They were having fun practicing. I actually felt like taking off my clothes and putting on my cleats and getting in there with them. It was really, really fun. That was the day I made up my mind."
"He's gonna be an outside linebacker type guy. He's kind of that rush linebacker," Treweek said. "If they need to throw some pressure on the quarterback, I imagine sending him off the edge would be what they want to do. Probably use him some in coverage because he can do that as well. He played a little bit of safety for us as well, strong safety at times, depending on what defense we were in. He can cover and he can rush and he can do it all. He can flat out fly.
"He's one of these guys, he's going to get to Missouri and the fans are going to be excited to have him there. He does things the right way. He's not going to get into trouble, he works hard. He's a good fit."
The Next Step
After Agbasimere signs on Wednesday, he is awaiting instruction from the staff at Missouri. He said they will send him a plan, workouts and the like, to help him get ready to come to campus in June.
"I'll be coming in early June. I'm gonna be down there for the summer. I will be there to take some classes in the summer, getting into the gym and working out and getting ready for summer camp," he said. "I think it's gonna be a totally new experience entirely.
"We have a weight program, but it's nothing like too big or too huge. We have weight rooms here, we have trainers, we have coaches, but I don't think it's going to be anything to compare to college."
"Just being able to teach them the game, you don't always get guys that have never played before and then a year later they're playing Division One," Treweek said. "But these guys came over so blessed with physical ability that once we taught them the game and they started to figure it out a little bit, it's a no-brainer that they're Division One kids."
In addition to Bello and Agbasimere, tight end/defensive end Taiwo Damilola will sign with former Mizzou assistant Dave Steckel to play at Missouri State.
"It couldn't have worked out better. These guys came, taking kind of a shot in the dark coming from Nigeria to see what happened," Treweek said. "Now all of a sudden all three of them of them are going to play Division One football. It just couldn't have worked out any better for them."
"This kid has to be able to play to get a scholarship to be a linebacker or a safety or whatever he will be at Missouri. That kid has to have some type of talent. That's what it's about. It's about giving all kids an opportunity," Dickerson said. "For them to be able to actually come here and you talking to me, you talking to Franklin, him getting a scholarship to Missouri, I think it's unreal. It's a blessing, man."
Agbasimere has hopes of another blessing: That his family will be able to see him play in college. His parents, Richard and Regina, still live in Lagos. Franklin has three younger sisters (as well as an older brother and sister). He said his father did some research about the game of football when he moved to America. "My mom, she doesn't know much about football," he says with a laugh. They have never seen him play a game.
"I get to talk to them on the phone and once in a while. My mom and dad are not into all this social media thing, so once in a while I call my sister on FaceTime so I get to see their faces any time I have the chance," he said. "They will be able to watch, but it would be really good to see them here being able to watch me play live."
Inspiring from Afar
Xtreme Procision has been around only since late 2010. None of the players who have moved to America through the program are in the NFL at this point in time. But along with the trio from Montverde, Dickerson has an XP product at Maryland, where he himself played college football.
"We talk all the time. He's a very humble kid. I honestly think a lot of these kids don't realize how talented they are," Dickerson said of Agbasimere. "They're all raw. You get an opportunity to see kids with their ceiling. You look at a kid like Franklin get a chance to play in the SEC only playing two years of high school football, it's a great story.
"They want to learn. They want it. Now that they see their friends and kids get an opportunity like Franklin, it's like 'Oh my God, I can do it too.' The main thing that I wanted to do, I wanted to find terrific kids and football players.
"Just coming from London, some of the kids were maybe just finishing high school. That's why I'm working so hard with Lavar and with XP. That's why I work the way I work. Once you go to London and you see a kid who's maybe 18, 19 years old and you're like, 'Wow, if I would have come here three years ago.' There are so many kids in these countries who can come over here and play and get a chance to play high major college football and get an education, but people just don't know. People don't know these kids exist. Because to the rest of the world, they don't."
Perhaps soon, through stories like that of Franklin Agbasimere, they will. Dickerson just completed a camp in London. He is looking to expand to Jamaica, the Bahamas, perhaps even Japan.
"The main part of it, and I don't want to take away from this part of it, it's the character of these kids. When I was in Africa, I got a chance to spend maybe, I was over there for like ten days, so I get a chance to actually talk to the kids," Dickerson said. "Franklin, he had leadership qualities when he was there. I said this kid can get in a structured environment and actually be able to learn and grasp what he's doing so fast here in Africa, I think he can be a special kid. He has leadership qualities that a lot of kids just don't have.
"Once you see the kids over in their country, it's a very humbling experience. You see those kids, a lot of them don't have anything. To be able to help give them an opportunity to come to the U.S. to get an education, my thing is, when they get an education over here in America, it changes the course of not only their life, but they'll be able to go back over with a degree from high school and a degree from college and get great jobs. I think it helps. People don't realize when kids come over here how it helps some of their family situations when they're able to go back and maybe work for the government or get great jobs to help their families."
Dickerson is constantly searching for the next Franklin Agbasimere. Agbasimere, meanwhile, is about to embark on the next step of his journey, hoping to be visible to other kids like him who may never have even picked up a football. Dickerson says it isn't about the NFL. Agbasimere hopes one day it can be.
"Yeah," he says. "I hope so. I hope so. I think that's something that can happen."
What a story that would be.