Japanese Sumo Wrestler Playing DL At Colorado State Has The Most Unique Jersey In College Football

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The vast majority of college football players hail from the United States, as the sport hasn’t really caught on around the globe despite being one of America’s most popular pastimes. With that said, there are some foreign players who’ve been able to harness other athletic backgrounds in order to pivot—including Colorado State defensive lineman Hidetora Hanada.

The Colorado State Rams aren’t exactly a national powerhouse, and I’m going to assume most fans aren’t intimately familiar with the roster of a team that’s posted a 4-6 record over the course of the current college football campaign.

However, there’s not a single player on that squad who’s taken a more unconventional path to get to where he is today than Hanada, who was a highly-touted sumo wrestler in his native Japan (he won a gold medal in the heavyweight division at the 2022 World Games).

Earlier this year, Hanada announced his decision to take his talents to Fort Collins, saying he viewed it as a personal challenge with the potential to test his limits as an athlete.

The 6’1″, 280-pound DL has only appeared in a couple of games for the Rams so far, although he was credited with three assisted tackles during their showdown with Air Force at the end of October.

Hanada is currently residing close to 6,000 miles away from his original home, but over the weekend, the Rams announced he’ll be using his jersey to pay tribute to his roots in a tweet where the team revealed it will be adopting Japanese lettering (known as “kanj”) on the back of his jersey.

I’m going to assume most people reading this aren’t fluent in Japanese, so if you need some help with the translation, the message reads:

For the rest of the season, Hidetora Hanada’s nameplate will have his name written in kanji.

We want him to remember home! He is a great addition to our team!

That’s a pretty cool gesture.