Motekiai Langi: The biggest thing in football Featured
21 July, 2016. FROM the wonderful world of American college recruiting, where oversized manchildren regularly blow our minds with their enormous dimensions, comes perhaps the most physically-remarkable prospect America has ever seen.
Motekiai Langi, a 193kg behemoth who has been labelled the soon-to-be biggest thing in football.
The 201cm monster, who describes himself as a “gigantic, muscular teddy bear”, is still a year away from playing at the college level but that hasn’t stopped fans gawking at his physical proportions — and dreaming about the havoc he’ll wreak on the field.
Every time a photograph of him making regular-sized human beings look like toddlers is posted on Twitter, fans freak out.
Her superbly-written piece included this colourful account of their meeting at a burger joint.
“If Motekiai Langi’s chair were able to emote, it would beg for mercy,” Niesen wrote. “It deserves a Congressional Medal of Honour, a Nobel prize in Physics — anything for holding out over this hour-long lunch as Langi’s posterior overflows from three sides of its metal frame.
Though this Phoenix-area Red Robin has seen its fair share of overweight American carnivores, he’s another classification altogether: the human equivalent of a genetically modified fruit, the sort of man one imagines living at the top of a beanstalk or north of Winterfell.”
When you see the photographs, it’s hard to argue with that description.
Langi was working on a pig farm in his native Tonga when a coach from Brigham Young University visited his island and saw him playing basketball.
BYU assistant Steve Kaufusi was impressed with Langi’s agility for a man of his heft and decided to recommend him to head coach Bronco Mendenhall despite his complete lack of experience.
He was announced as part of the school’s recruiting class last year, when Mendenhall conceded Langi’s signing was purely down to his size.
“Two years ago we sent coaches to Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand and Fiji,” Mendenhall said. “We came back with three to five players who might be — (even though) they don’t know the rules — might be able to be football players.
“(Langi is) 6’7” and a lean 410 pounds. I’ve known him for 15 minutes. He came from Tonga into my office the day before he entered the MTC. Good luck finding a suit to fit that guy.
“So, Coach Kaufusi had seen him, two years prior. How do you evaluate 6’7” 410 pounds to assess if he can move or not? (Kaufusi’s) evaluation of him is based on a pick up game of basketball. He could move well and was light on his feet.
“He’s got to be something. 6’7”, 410 pounds, light on his feet. Maybe just on the snap he lays down sideways and people have to try to find a way around him. Maybe an offensive guard, he’s just big. He’s got to be something. So, I took a chance.”
Langi won’t debut for the Cougars until next year because, as a practising Mormon, he is currently completing a two-year mission in Arizona.
It’s not uncommon for commits to Utah-located BYU, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If anything, the delay has heightened anticipation around Langi’s arrival.
-News.com.au
