While the New York Metropolitan area has never been a hotbed for college football talent, a myriad of gifted football players from the area have adopted the Penn State Nittany Lions as sort of their hometown school due to the lack of a Football Bowl Subdivision/Division I-A program in the five boroughs.
Led by Brooklyn-born and bred living legend Joe Paterno, the Blue and White have successfully recruited a slew of high school standouts from New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey in recent years, including Staten Island’s own Ollie Ogbu, who has quietly put together a remarkable career in Happy Valley as a blue-collar defensive enforcer.
Ogbu’s exploits in the East-West Shrine game turned out to be a real eye-opener for some NFL talent evaluators, as the stout 6’1”, 298-pound interior grinder flashed some