Ibekwe Making Career Change
by Frank Burlison, Long Beach Press-Telegram
April 27, 2006 Remember the commercials of the early 1990s ``I wanna be like Mike''?
They celebrated Michael Jordan while not so-subliminally trying to sell Gatorade to all of those who admired basketball's greatest player ever --- or wanted to follow him to the NBA.
Fast forward to today.
Maybe it's time Gatorade or someone else trying to push a product to the masses devise a sales campaign involving Antonio Gates.
After all, there are more than one or two folks out there who would like to mirror the success of the San Diego Chargers' tight end.
Although he was a heavily touted basketball (ital)and(endital) football prospect while attending Central High in Detroit, Gates didn't strap on pads at any of his stops as a college basketball player, Michigan State, Eastern Michigan and Kent State.
That didn't keep the Chargers from signing him as an undrafted rookie on May 2 in 2003, a little more than six weeks after his final game as an undersized (6-foot-4 and 240 pounds) power forward at KSU.
Three years later, he's a two-time All-Pro and the most obvious reason why National Football League talent evaluators are taking long looks at basketball players --- even if they have next-to-no football backgrounds.
Onye Ibekwe, who played parts of two seasons at Long Beach State, is one of those.
Ibekwe, a Crenshaw High graduate who started his college hoops career at Oklahoma State, joins Ed Nelson (Connecticut) and Jai Lewis (George Mason) as three players who are now bleeps on the radar of NFL franchises as potential tight ends.
They might not be selected when the NFL holds its seven-round draft this weekend but all three are likely to get multiple invitations to free-agent rookie camps next month.
Ibekwe, who was measured by scouts at 6-foot-5 3/8 and 260 pounds during workouts in front of approximately 15 representatives of NFL teams at El Camino College on April 1, is being represented by Long Beach-based attorney Everett Glenn, who is certified by the NFL Players Association to represent players in contract negotiations.
Glenn enlisted the services of Compton College assistant coach John Rome to instruct
Ibekwe in the football basics, on (through fundamental instruction and near-daily workouts at Compton College and the Home Depot Center) and off (through ``chalk talks'' and extensive videotape study) the field.
And Glenn has also lobbied his football contacts to take a look at Ibekwe, either in person or via a ``highlights'' DVD that show Ibekwe --- in drills conducted by Rome --- doing a decent imitation of what an NFL tight end is supposed to look like.
Ibekwe insists he isn't a complete football novice.
``I played in my freshman and sophomore years when I was at Manual Arts (before transferring to Crenshaw), and I played a lot of youth and flag football, so it's something that I'm not foreign to,'' Ibekwe said earlier this week.
Glenn watched Ibekwe play in the Walter Pyramid over the past two seasons and was convinced that there was enough football potential there if the Sociology major (Ibekwe said he is on track to graduate next month) if he was willing to try to cultivate it.
As it turned out, Ibekwe's college basketball career ended a lot sooner than he anticipated.
He was suspended (for the second time in the season) just before the 49ers' Feb. 2 game at Cal State Northridge --- he was averaging 4.1 points, 4.4 rebounds and 12 minutes per game at the time --- for what Coach Larry Reynolds would only refer to as ``a violation of team rules.''
Ibekwe would prefer to leave it that, as well.
``I've put that in the past,'' he said. ``It was a blessing in disguise. When some doors close, other things can happen.'' |
