From 3 a.m. weights to reps on an empty field, Daniel Akinkunmi won't stop

Daniel Akinkunmi looked down at the text across the front of his jersey, which reads “ALL-AMERICAN” in oversized lettering, and chuckled affably.

The exclusivity of that designation isn’t lost on him.

After all, though dozens of his peers have also earned Under Armour All-American status, every single one of those peers actually lives in America.

But then there’s Akinkunmi, a native of London who’s just two years into his journey as a gridiron football player. He's not the first international player to take part in the All-American Game (Finland native Olaus Alinen, for example, did so last year), but it's a rare honor for a player from foreign soil. Akinkunmi is the only 2024 All-American who hails from outside the States.

For further insight on Akinkunmi's athletic background, check out OUInsider’s October commitment profile on the 6-foot-5, 320-pound mauler. At that time, though, he was little more than a feel-good story and a fun bullet point for the Sooners’ signing day pamphlet. He’d committed to Oklahoma over offers from Ole Miss, Clemson, Miami and many other programs, but many still regarded the three-star lineman as a long-term developmental project. Given an obvious lack of elite competition on his resume, it was hard to figure how well Akinkunmi would actually hold up when pitted against players his own size.

Come November, though, Akinkunmi picked up an invite to the Under Armour All-American Game, which thus presented an opportunity for him to strut his stuff on one of high school football’s biggest stages. The game is preceded by several days of highly publicized practice sessions, which are usually well attended by recruiting analysts and evaluators. If Akinkunmi was going to cement a reputation and potentially earn a fourth star, this was his chance to do so.

The All-American Game and its festivities take place every year in Orlando over the New Year’s holiday, and Akinkunmi had long since planned to enroll at Oklahoma in January. So he decided that he would make the detour to the Sunshine State on his way to Norman, and he agreed to participate in the game.

The first night of practice in Orlando wasn’t particularly demanding. It featured little more than stretching, individual drill work and an offensive install. When the 90-minute session concluded, most of the players trotted directly from the field to the locker room. But Akinkunmi didn’t even take his helmet off. He walked back out near midfield, and for the next fifteen minutes, he drilled his footwork and pass-protection technique literally all by himself. By the time he finished all his extra reps, there wasn’t a single player or coach left on the field.

When asked why he stayed so long after practice to work in silence and isolation, Akinkunmi insisted that it’s nothing out of the ordinary for him.

“I do that every single day,” he remarked. “The whole process behind it is, I have not been playing the sport for long, so I need as many reps as possible. I feel like the reason I’ve been able to catch up with all my US competition is because I’ve repped this out so many times. I think this game is about repetition and how perfect you can do things. So I just need to rep it out to a consistent level — and consistently good or perfect — to get to the point where [I] become a very good player.”

But although he’d already gone above and beyond by most standards, Akinkunmi wasn’t done working for the evening. He joined his roommate David Stone for dinner, after which the two talked for a while and then headed for the weight room with a third future Sooner.

“We were up at 3 a.m. lifting, me and him and Von [Mitchell],” said Stone. “We were all in the weight room, and I ended up calling Jayden [Jackson]. I was like, ‘Hey, man. This dude’s going to be special. His work ethic is just like ours.’”

When the trio finally wrapped up their lift, Akinkunmi set several alarms for 8 a.m. and turned in for the night. Team meetings and breakfast awaited, followed by a much more strenuous 11 a.m. practice.

Around noon, the most anticipated portion of the practice session arrived, as the offensive linemen and defensive linemen went head-to-head in a series of 1-on-1 matchups. Akinkunmi drew Texas signee Zina Umeozulu and Texas A&M signee Dealyn Evans, getting two snaps each against a pair of future SEC defensive ends.

One might well have imagined a football newbie from England would be overmatched against a pair of the top defenders from the talent-rich Lone Star State. But Akinkunmi didn’t flinch.

“It felt amazing — I won all four reps,” he recalled. “We didn’t have enough time; I called out Stone. We didn’t have enough time; we both wanted to go up against each other. But I loved it. I love to compete.”

Akinkunmi’s performance came as a surprise to the analysts in attendance, many of whom imagined he’d have his struggles adjusting to the speed and physicality of American competition. But Akinkunmi insists that the stigma isn’t fair, and relished the opportunity to prove it.

“I feel like people have the understanding I’m raw or I don’t know what I’m doing,” he observed. “But the fact is, because of this, I’ve had [to do] some research and had to reach out to my guys in the NFL [Academy] and ask questions. And I probably have even more knowledge than some US guys here from a high-level standpoint, because we have such amazing coaches and staff.”

None of it came as a surprise to Mitchell, who had seen Akinkunmi’s prowess on full display in the weight room the previous night.

“Bro, Daniel’s a dawg,” Mitchell proclaimed. “He’s a dawg. He’s strong, bruh. I’m gonna be real; he’s strong as heck. I’m not even gonna lie to you. That boy’s strong, and he got great footwork. And he’s even a better person. We’re glad to have Daniel on our team.”

And furthermore, Akinkunmi is highly competitive — so competitive, in fact, that he displayed legitimate annoyance at his elimination from the lighthearted Big Man Punt Return competition. It’s one of the many individual contests held throughout the All-American festivities, and the winner receives a custom boombox. A group of offensive linemen do battle for the crown, and victory goes to the last man standing when all the other competitors fail to field a catchable punt. In Akinkunmi’s case, he had to chase down an off-target punt and came up a couple of steps short, but the judges ruled that the boot was indeed catchable. Thus, Akinkunmi was eliminated, but he protested that ruling vehemently.

“I got hosed!” he shouted to anyone who would listen as the competitors walked off the field.

Stone, who’s long been regarded as a five-star recruit and currently ranks as the No. 7 overall prospect in the nation, is no stranger to first-round hype. That’s essentially the consensus expectation for him; a five-star prospect is quite literally defined as a player that should be a first-round draft pick one day. But the Sooners’ top-ranked signee believes that Akinkunmi has the same potential in the long run, despite his modest ranking.

“I feel like [we] could definitely make the case [alongside] the Trent Williams and Gerald McCoy class that we had,” said Stone. “I feel like it could really be like that — us entering and going first round together in the same draft class. And I feel like he’s definitely someone that can be special just like that. He knows the whole playbook. He was studying film right after we got back from the weight room. And you know, after practice the next day, he was still the last one out here working with me, man. So I know he’s going to be special. I know it. I can feel it.”

For context, McCoy and Williams were respectively drafted third and fourth overall in 2010. Sam Bradford was the first pick of that same draft, which marked the first and only time in history that one program accounted for three of the top four picks. Since then, only one draft (2020) has seen Oklahoma produce a first-round pick on both sides of the ball.

But hype aside, regardless of how successful he becomes in an Oklahoma uniform, Akinkunmi has already cemented his status as a bona fide fan favorite. That’s largely due to his social media activity, as he’s taken to Twitter on several occasions to fire up — and reassure — Sooner Nation. Most recently, he responded to Oklahoma’s Alamo Bowl loss with a message of encouragement for the fans.

“I feel like it’s something very important, because at the end of the day, you’re going to win or lose a ballgame,” he explained. “We lost [the Alamo Bowl], sadly. But it’s about coming back and preparing for the next game, because at the end of the day, it’s always about the next. Once it’s happened in the present, you can’t change [it]. All you can do is talk about it. So there’s no need to throw hate. There’s no need to be mean to each other. All you can do is pick each other up and make them better, and try and hopefully go back and win the next game, and win the next game, and hopefully win a national championship.”

That’s the sole mission for Akinkunmi and the rest of the 2024 class, with whom he’s already developed an outstanding camaraderie. 20 of the Sooners’ 27 signees are set to enroll early and join the program next month.

“We already feel like family,” Akinkunmi stated. “And I think we’re all ready to just try and come in, compete and dominate. I think when you have that type of mindset and you’re trying to play for each other, you start to win.”

And though his future position coach has taken some heat from the fanbase as of late, Akinkunmi has the utmost faith in Bill Bedenbaugh. He couldn’t care less about any narratives that have been spun concerning Bedenbaugh, and he regards him as the ideal coach to refine and improve his game. That begins next week, when Akinkunmi arrives in Norman to begin the next chapter of his football journey.

“We talk every single day,” said Akinkunmi of Bedenbaugh. “He calls my mum every single day. He and my mum are best friends; they talk all the time. Me and him, we actually love each other. That’s my coach, and I’m never going to change up on him unless he gets fired — and let’s be honest, he will never, ever get fired.

“So I’m rocking with Coach B all the way. He’s an amazing coach, and I can’t wait to play for him and hopefully be able to have that type of relationship and that level of development to a point where I’m probably in the first round. I can invite him to the games!”

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