From Tipperary to SEC: Irish rugby player with no football experience commits to South Carolina

From Tipperary to SEC: Irish rugby player with no football experience commits to South Carolina Irish rugby player Neff Giwa has never played American football By KEN MAGUIRE AP sports writer March 29, 2026, 12:35 PM LONDON -- Neff Giwa sometimes asks himself: “Is this really happening to me?” Incredibly, yes. The 20-year-old Irishman who has never played American football committed on Sunday to play at South Carolina as an offensive lineman. Giwa, who is also Nigerian, has come a long way — from Tipperary — in a short amount of time. Just a few months after showing an interest in the sport, he was touring U.S. college campuses, meeting coaches and collecting offers. It’s a lot to handle, even for someone who is 6 feet, 7 1/2 inches tall, weighs 295 pounds and has 37-inch-long arms and great foot speed. “I knew that there’d be a journey there, but I could never have anticipated this,” Giwa, in an interview with The Associated Press, said of the whirlwind around his recruitment. Giwa, whose full first name is Oluwanifemi, selected the Gamecocks over offers from Miami, North Carolina, SMU, Tennessee and Texas. Giwa had two visits to Columbia and spent “ a lot of time ” with coach Shane Beamer. Giwa — pronounced with a hard G — heard about Brandon Collier through a friend familiar with the American’s track record of finding, training and placing international kids at U.S. college football programs. Collier, an American who played defensive line at UMass, runs PPI Recruits out of Germany. Collier had Giwa visit him for a workout and immediately envisioned him protecting quarterbacks. “If you can create a tackle in a laboratory, this is what you want him to look like,” Collier told the AP. It wasn’t just his size, though. Collier clocked Giwa at 4.88 seconds in the 40-yard dash and measured his broad jump at 9 feet, 10 inches — “pretty freakish numbers,” Collier noted. “Then he has the toughness,” he added. “You can have all these measurements, but if you’re not tough me...