INDIANAPOLIS – Amobi Okoye’s mother was a school principal back in Nigeria, and couldn’t find anyone she trusted to take care of her 2-year-old son. So she just took him to work with her.

Thus began Okoye’s meteoric academic rise that saw him graduate high school at age 15and the University of Louisville at age 19.

Now the 6-foot-3, 302-pound defensive tackle promises to be a first-round draft pick before he turns 20, even after completingfour seasons of college ball.

“I’ve never really seen myself as being younger than everybody else,” Okoye said at the NFL combine.

“I’ve always seen myself in the grade I’m at. I kind of started realizing it [his youth] this past year and all the media attention started coming around.”

Okoye is not related to former NFL running back Christian Okoye (`Okoye’ is like `Edwards’ in Nigeria, he says). His family moved to Huntsville,Ala., in 1999 to rejoin his father, who owned a medical supply business.

“When we moved here, the principal wanted to send me back to eighth grade,” recalledOkoye, who already was a high schooler in his native land.

“I disagreed and felt like I was getting pushed back. We came to an agreement, shedecided, `I’ll keep you here for two weeksand depending on how you perform determinesif you stay or not.’

“After the first week she put me in some classes I already took. The reports got back and the teacher told her I had to be moved to upper classes. After that I pretty muchstayed in high school. I started high school at age 12.”

Meanwhile he began learning about American football.His father thought he was getting fat and urged him to find an extracurricular activity and he didn’t mean the chess club.

“My high school coach was a substitute teacher for my homeroom,” Okoye said.

“He took a look at me and said, `You’re a pretty big guy, come out here and play football.’

“I went out and changed my schedule to seventh-period athletics and joined. It was a rough first day. But I stuck with it just to prove a lot of people wrong.”

When college time came around his fatherwanted him to go Ivy League. “My dad was big on (me) going to Harvard… ,” he said.”Not to downgrade Harvard,but Louisville had the best of both worlds for me as far asathletics and academic-wise.I didn’t want to go to any big school, I wanted to be part ofsomething growing.”

He wound up a unanimous All-Big East selection as a senior after totaling six sacks from an inside rush position. He’s hadexperience at both nose tackle and the off-tackle and thinks he could play either spot in the NFL.

Yet he can’t escape the fact he is unique. He was the youngest player ever to appear in the Senior Bowl.

“I got teased all the time,” he said. “They called me ‘Phe,’short for `Phenom.’ It comeslot.

“In the Cincinnati game my junior year, during the play I heard somebody screaming myname. I thought it was one of my teammates, but it was one of their players. He was like,`Okoye, are you really 18?’ I was like, `Yeah, now go back to the huddle.'”

Do the constant reminders bother him?

“Not at all,” he said. “It got to a point where I got tired of everybody asking. But I’ve come to realize it is my story. It’s my life.”

• Vinny DiTrani-The Record (Hackensack N.J.) (MCT)