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Saints' Nigerian DT David Onyemata had never seen a football five years ago

METAIRIE, La. -- Brian Dobie was sitting in his office in September 2011 when the University of Manitoba football coach heard a "soft knock on the door."

In walked a 6-foot-4, 330-pound kid he had never seen before.

"There was this guy that I hoped would be a football player standing at my door," Dobie recalled.

He got his wish. Sort of.

That kid was David Onyemata, who had just moved from Lagos, Nigeria, to Canada earlier that year to attend the university. Though Onyemata played soccer growing up in Nigeria, he had never really even heard of North American football before he moved to Canada.