On the field, their playing styles couldn’t be more different. Off the field, the two couldn’t be closer.
Such describes the relationship between UCLA’s two freshman running backs Soso Jamabo and Bolu Olorunfunmi. Jamabo is a sleek, 6-foot-3 back with an effortless running style, and Olorunfunmi is a 5-foot-10, 220-pound workhorse who always keeps his legs churning.
“I love ’em – Soso and Bolu,” said sophomore running back Nate Starks during fall camp. “They bring a lot of energy to our group. They have a great mindset. They have the same goals.”
And after practice every day, they hang out. Whether it be going to class, playing video games or eating dinner, the two freshmen are almost always together. Olorunfunmi calls them “best friends.”
“We hang out like every day,” Olorunfunmi said. “Literally everything – everything we do.”
The two talk about establishing a legacy at UCLA. For Olorunfunmi, this has been his dream school ever since he was a young boy growing up in Clovis, California. For Jamabo, UCLA presents him with a chance to separate himself from his Texas roots and from his own identity.
Different backgrounds
Olorunfunmi’s childhood included watching many UCLA games on TV. He specifically remembers the 2005 Bruins, who went 10-2 and won the Sun Bowl.
“I’ve always had something for L.A. I love the city ’cause I used to come out here all the time – my dad had business out here,” Olorunfunmi said. “So it’s just something that was close to me.”
Jamabo’s upbringing was entirely different. Growing up in Plano, Texas, he was surrounded by burnt orange Longhorn logos and Big 12 football. Conversations about the Pac-12 were basically nonexistent.
“Everyone from Texas is expecting you to go to a Texas school and go be a big star for Texas, or a local southern school like that,” Jamabo said.
As Jamabo grew up saturated in Texas talk, he felt the desire to separate himself from it. That’s when he met Olorunfunmi at a B2G Elite Camp in summer 2014, before their senior seasons in high school.
Olorunfunmi, a UCLA verbal commit at the time, proposed the idea of him and Jamabo playing together in the Bruin backfield.
“We talked a little bit about it, like (Jamabo) talked about what he liked here,” Olorunfunmi said. “And I was pretty much telling him, ‘This is a good place to come.’”
At the time, Jamabo wasn’t hooked by the idea. But when National Signing Day came around in February 2015, he knew UCLA was the place for him.
“I felt like me coming out here would be a different experience, kind of like making my own legacy is what I wanted to do,” Jamabo said. “It was never knowing that (Olorunfunmi and I) were for sure coming here together. But now it’s pretty cool that looking back on it we did have that.”
The foundation for the future
Only three months into their freshman seasons, Jamabo and Olorunfunmi have already started to lay the foundation for their running back legacy at UCLA.
Jamabo has earned the nickname “Silky” from coaches due to his smooth, effortless running style. Olorunfunmi, on the other hand, has earned a reputation for being UCLA’s bruising runner. In UCLA’s fall scrimmage back in August, Olorunfunmi shed tacklers left and right.
“I really don’t know if I had a player, at any position, who was as strong with overall strength as he was as a high school senior,” said Tom Simons, Olorunfunmi’s coach at Clovis North High School from 2011 to 2014.
Heading into Saturday’s homecoming game against Colorado, Jamabo and Olorunfunmi figure to be UCLA’s lead ball carriers, with redshirt junior Paul Perkins and Starks still nursing injuries.
Perhaps it will be a foretaste of what’s to come for the UCLA running game in the near future. Or maybe the future is now.
“I see myself doing some really big things. I mean no specifics, just really coming here and just becoming my own man,” Jamabo said. “Not being a Texas guy who stayed in Texas, but someone who came from Texas out to California and did really big things, did really good things for this.”
“We’re just trying to build a legacy here, build something new,” Olorunfunmi said.