A LOOK AT SUNDAY’S RAIDER, RAM OPPONENTS : Okoye Plunging Ahead--Nigeria to Kansas City

What are the odds that a discus thrower from Nigeria and a baseball player from the Deep South would find each other playing football here on a sub-freezing Sunday in December?

From Africa comes Christian Okoye, a humble giant for whom track and field blazed an unlikely trail to the Kansas City Chiefs.

From Bessemer, Ala., and another dimension comes Bo Jackson, pumping life into a Raider season that had all but flickered and died.

As they meet, Jackson leads National Football League rookies in rushing with 553 yards. Okoye is four yards behind. Small world. But, as Okoye sees it, it’s all Bo’s.

“I’ve seen him play twice (on TV),” Okoye said of Jackson. “He’s a good athlete. I’m not experienced like he is. He’s been playing football all his life. This is my fourth year, and I don’t see myself as good as he is.”

One could stretch a point for comparison. Both are big--Jackson weighs 230 pounds, Okoye 253--and fast, but Okoye defers without argument.

“He’s faster. I’m bigger. But he’s got the quickness. He’s better than I am.”

There he goes, Okoye is told, being modest again. Hasn’t he left his own cleat marks on a few defenders?

“I’ve done it a couple of times. The two times we played the San Diego Chargers, I can recall running over people. But I think it was the defensive backs, not linebackers--the smaller guys.

“When I saw Bo run over Brian Bosworth, if I was there I shake his hand.”

Their life styles have little in common. Next spring, Jackson will be back in Kansas City in the stadium next door, playing baseball. Okoye hopes to be a high school physical education teacher in Southern California, perhaps after a trip home to Nigeria. He can flat guarantee he won’t be playing baseball.

“Oh, no,” he said, laughing. “If you talk about sports that I hate, I hate baseball. I think it’s very boring. I don’t think I’ll ever play it. The longest I’ve seen of (a baseball game) was maybe two minutes or a minute and a half.”

When Okoye (pronounced a- coy -ya) arrived in the United States in 1982 to enroll at Azusa Pacific University, he was known only as a guy who wanted to throw some weight around--discus, shot, hammer, whatever--and help the school win some track and field championships in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics, which it did in each of his four seasons.

He still holds the African record for the discus and would like to represent Nigeria in the ’88 Olympics but realizes it’s a remote possibility, considering the conflict with football.

On the other hand, considering what has already happened for Okoye, almost anything is possible. His story is the stuff of legends, especially around Azusa and Enugu, his hometown of 187,000 in Nigeria:

Big, humble kid from another country sees first football game, thinks it looks like fun, tries it. Instant sensation, drafted by pro team, more success. People back home have no idea what he’s doing but the money looks good, and he’s still the same sweet kid he always was.

“I’m not a very good spender,” Okoye said. “I don’t have very much things to buy, except a few clothes.”

There is no chance, he said, he’ll ever be too Americanized to go home to Nigeria, where he is known by his nickname, Cho Cho.

“No, I’m a down-to-earth person,” he said. “When I go back to Nigeria I’m still the same person.

Okoye is the fifth of seven children. His mother died in 1980 and his father is a military officer. At 26, he is old for a rookie, but then, Jackson is 25.

Whereas Bo’s arrival in the NFL was delayed by baseball, Okoye spent two years working in Nigeria before he could come to the U.S., then had to support himself by working as a janitor his first year because he had only a partial track scholarship at Azusa Pacific. He got a full scholarship when he started playing football as a sophomore.

He gained 3,569 yards in three years and even though he wasn’t playing against major competition, the Chiefs traded up 11 spots last spring to get him in the second round.

He has been one of the few highlights of a 2-10 season and a larger factor than Paul Palmer, the Heisman Trophy runner-up from Temple. Okoye has started all nine non-strike games and, besides his rushing, has caught 18 passes for 132 yards.

Chief coach Frank Gansz said, “Paul is not as large as Christian, so when you start to play the teams with the outside linebackers that really come after you, you’ve got to think about your pass protection as well as running the ball. Paul can do those things, but he doesn’t have the size.

“But Christian is an outstanding fullback. When he came in here, the first time he lined up and ran out for a pass you could see the guy was very talented.

“And he’s so impressive, so conscientious. He’s really a professional, just an outstanding young man.”

But he’s not Bo Jackson, and the Chiefs don’t ask him to be.

“We tend not to put him at the perimeter as often,” Gansz said. “If Christian had the experience and we presented opportunities for him to get outside, he may be something like Bo. He can run at times like Bo. Bo can run with power, he can make you miss and he runs with exceptional speed.

“Christian, in time, might be comparable. I don’t think he’s comparable in speed. I don’t think anybody’s comparable to Bo in speed.”

Billie Matthews, who coaches the Chiefs’ running backs, said: “I thought that he would be a guy that would take working and training to prepare, but we drafted him because we needed a big player in the backfield. We thought we had a chance to get him ready for this season--sometime during the season. I never expected him to start the first game, but we found he was the best guy we had to play fullback.

“Christian is a better than average blocker (and) he will improve. Blocking for the run, I would rate him above average. Blocking for the pass, he’s about average. He’s a very strong athlete, so with the rules allowing you to use your hands he does a pretty good job.

“He’s a very bright guy and extremely coachable. This guy is a mild-mannered kind of person who can switch over when he puts on the uniform and starts to play. He can play tough and be very aggressive. He’s a very aggressive runner.”

But a sweet kid.

“He’s concerned about people liking him,” Matthews said. “I didn’t expect him to be as outgoing as he is. He has some wit. He’s a charming guy.”

Matthews said Okoye never complains, but others believe the Chiefs aren’t using him enough. He is averaging 4.2 yards an attempt but is carrying the ball only 14.5 times a game because the Chiefs are usually playing catch-up.

“If we’re going to be successful, he needs to carry the ball 20, 22 times a game at least,” Matthews said. “I talked to him about that and he said, ‘Coach, I used to carry it 40 times a game.’ ”

Okoye said: “When I was drafted, there was a lot of talk that the Chiefs are gambling and I’m a ‘project.’ People told me all those things, but I wasn’t worried about it because I had already made up my mind to come here and work real hard in order to make it.

“One of the things that helped me was, immediately after the draft I was brought in here to start working and learning the system, and I’ve been here since then. During training camp, I felt like I’m part of the team already. I felt very much confident.”

The Raiders seemed interested in him before the draft.

“I thought they were going to draft me,” Okoye said. “But when the draft came and they didn’t, I was a little disappointed. But then I came here and the people are very nice to me and it worked out pretty good.”

In his first season at Azusa Pacific, Okoye had trouble holding onto the ball and acquired the reputation of a fumbler.

“One of my problems in college was I was running too high,” he said. “I tend to run straight up all the time and that’s when they knock the ball out.”

But he has fumbled only twice this season.

A more difficult adjustment is yet to come. Okoye is accustomed to warm climates.

“I’m trying to put on everything that I can to keep from freezing,” he said.