The biggest surprise of college football’s National Signing Day is Motekiai Langi, a 6’7″, 410-pound teenager from Tonga with so little football experience that people thought he was a hoax.
BYU gave Langi a scholarship, despite the fact that head coach Bronco Mendenhall met him for a grand total of 15 minutes and, as Deadspin notes, his entire recruiting evaluation was based on one pickup basketball game in 2013.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Mendenhall said teaching him how to play football will be an “adventure.”
“Maybe we’ll just have him lay sideways right off the snap and just block the whole thing out,” he said. “There’s got to be someway he can do something.”
According to Mendenhall, assistant coach Steve Kaufusi discovered Langi while he was playing a pickup basketball game in Tonga two years ago.
“He just saw a giant body who’s light on his feet and can change direction and loved working out and training,” Mendenhall said.
Read the full article at Business Insider.
You can watch Coach Bronco Mendenhall discuss Langi’s journey from Tonga to Provo below:
Aleah is a graduate of Southern Virginia University, where she studied English, Creative Writing, and Dance. She now works full time as a marketing and product manager, writer, and editor. She currently hosts the podcast “Single to the Glory” about singlehood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Aleah served a mission in California and loves baking, Lang Leav poetry, Gaynor Minden pointe shoes, and Bollywood movies.
