Kansas City's Gentle Giant

By Gavin Scott/Kansas City

Christian Okoye had never seen an American football game before 1982. When he did see one, he didn't much like it. The elongated shape of the ball seemed peculiar. He found the repeated stops and starts boring and confusing. Worse, he felt the frequent substitutions from the sidelines robbed the game of the natural flow that is the glory of soccer, his consuming passion since grade school.

Many overseas visitors voice such plaints about U.S. football. But few change their opinions as totally as Okoye. Last week the Nigerian-born fullback, 6 ft. 112 in., 260 lbs., led the charge as the N.F.L.'s Kansas City Chiefs hobbled the Green Bay Packers 23-3. Capitalizing on his awesome size and speed -- he can run 40 yds. in 4.46 sec. -- Okoye, 28, ran for 131 yds. and scored a touchdown to keep his league lead in rushing (1,322 yds.), and set a team record for the most yards gained in a season. For the fifth time this year he carried the ball more than 30 times. Small wonder that Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium blooms these days with banners proclaiming OKOYE COUNTRY. Thanks in large part to Okoye's heroics, the 7-6-1 Chiefs have a shot at the play-offs that begin Dec. 31. "That would be nice," says Okoye, who gives startling meaning to the term humble giant. "I like to see happiness in the locker room."

Unusual turns of happenstance conspired to lure the self-effacing Okoye away from the dusty city of Enugu in eastern Nigeria. Son of a onetime army officer, Okoye originally yearned for a soccer career. "It was soccer, soccer, soccer through elementary and high school," he recalls, "but as I grew up, my size made it impossible to go on." Known to schoolboy chums as "Cho-Cho," Okoye turned to track and field with ease. In 1981 an Enugu friend suggested that Okoye apply for a track scholarship at Azusa Pacific University, a small nondenominational Christian college in Southern California.

Azusa Pacific quickly discovered it had a one-man juggernaut on the field. With a 34-in. waist and 28-in. thighs, Okoye was a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics champion in discus, hammer throw, and shot put competitions. And, in a fateful decision now regretted by many opposing linemen, he opted to try football. "It was strange to me, but I had my size, strength and speed going for me, and I learned as I played," he says. Azusa Pacific football coach Jim Milhon recalls that a teammate once jokingly brought out a cardboard sign with an arrow showing Okoye which way to run. During his three years on the Azusa team, the Nigerian scored 33 touchdowns and won a berth in the 1987 Senior Bowl, where he scored four times. N.F.L. scouts were soon on to Okoye's case. "He's big, strong and fast," says Mihon, "but there's more to it than that. There's the quickness, the agility and the young body."

Scooped up by the Chiefs as a second-round draft choice in 1987, Okoye averaged only 54 yds. in rushing in his first two pro seasons. But when coach Marty Schottenheimer decided to emphasize the Chiefs' ground offense this year, Okoye found his groove. The formula is simple: they give him the ball, he runs with it. "I have to work harder than anyone else," says Okoye in his Nigerian lilt, "because everybody knows more about football than me and I have to catch up." Marvels Schottenheimer: "I don't think I've ever seen anyone with the combination of power and speed of Christian."

Although most running backs taper off at 30, Okoye will probably endure well beyond that benchmark because of his late start. "Christian hasn't taken the usual hammering through high school and college, and although he's 28, he has the football body of a 22-year-old," says his Azusa track mentor Terry Franson. Now negotiating for a new contract to replace his expiring, $150,000- a-year deal with the Chiefs, Okoye stands to get a handsome raise. But the fans' adulation has not yet gone to his head. Cho-Cho still wears his Azusa cap, emblazoned with a cross, around the locker room, and says that "being a Christian has helped me a whole lot. When the players get mad, I can control myself, playing my game instead of something else."