One of the fundamental ideologies of college football is “low man wins,” and few people know how to implement that principle like Colorado State defensive lineman Hidetora Hanada. The Japanese-native joined the Rams as a junior after coming up as a highly-revered sumo wrestling champion in his home country.
Head coach Jay Norvell announced that Hanada earned a scholarship on Friday!
This past season marked just Hanada’s second year playing the sport. He even recorded three tackles in a loss to Air Force back in October!
Not long thereafter, the Rams honored his heritage by putting the last name on the back of his jersey in his native language. Pretty cool.
Hanada started practicing sumo as a child. By the time he was in the second grade, he had already become a youth sumo champion.
The dominance continued and Hanada became the world junior champion in his sophomore and senior years of high school. And then he won the national amateur sumo championship as a 19-year-old freshman at Nippon Sport Science University in 2020.
Hanada had a very bright future in sumo. There was a lot of buzz around his ability to become one of the all-time greats. He was that good!
In the end, Hanada ultimately gave up sumo wrestling to pursue his NFL dreams. That started with an impressive showing at the CFL Combine. Offensive lineman could not figure him out!
If his play isn’t impressive enough (for someone so new to the sport), Hanada ran a 5.03-second 40-yard dash back in March.
Colorado State loved what it saw and had to have him!
Norvell and his staff were impressed with their new defensive lineman’s progress throughout the 2023 season and hope that he can blossom into a legitimate impact player next fall. They made their opinion on Hanada very clear by offering him a scholarship following his first year of college football in the United States!