Blue White Illustrated

| efore their son C.J. began middle school, Maryam and Abdul Olaniyan suggested that he choose between playing football and basketball. A jack of all trades, they told him, could never be a master of one. The decision wasn't easy. He was already a standout on the hardwood and the gridiron, and both the basketball coach and football coach pleaded with Olaniyan to stay. He couldn't choose between the two sports – or the two coaches – so instead he tried to bargain with his mom and dad. "It was a little difficult," he recalled, "so my parents told me that if I really wanted to play both that bad, then I had to walk home from practice every day." Which was about a mile and a half away. He agreed to the deal. "At the time, I was young, so I had more energy," he said. "I didn't mind walking home every day, but each day was a long day. I got home at 5:30 or 6 every night, depending on the season." He maintained a similar schedule throughout his years at Warren Mott High in Warren, Mich., where he became a top basketball recruit and a four-star defensive end. Sometimes he would stay at the school as late as 10 o'clock until Abdul, a pharmacist, got off of work to pick him up. (The high school was much further, a two-mile walk.) "Basically, I was living in my high school building all day," he said. "They even left a room for me to relax in." Fast forward four years. Even though he's at Penn State, is penciled in to be one of the Nittany Lions' starting defensive ends for the 2013 season and has given up on basketball, not much has changed in Olaniyan's daily routine. Sure, he's a six-and-a-half-hour drive from his hometown, but instead of being at his high school all day, Olaniyan can be found inside Penn State's Lasch Building seemingly at any given time, unless, of course, he's in the classroom. In fact, when he met this reporter for an interview after an afternoon workout, a sports information staffer asked Olaniyan, "Man, do you ever leave this place?" He laughed. He doesn't leave very often, especially this summer. As Olaniyan enters his redshirt junior season with the Nittany Lions, he said he has put more emphasis on the 2013 off-season than any of his previous three. In early July, he said he was in the best shape of his life. "Every work- out, every sprint, every conditioning drill that we do," he said, "I feel myself just killing it." That means he's been spending extra time in Craig Fitzgerald's weight room, completing defensive line drills and watching film on his own time. While it's an extra effort that assistant coach Larry Johnson surely appreciates from his defensive linemen, Olaniyan said

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