Thread: Gabe Carimi doesn't always blow his own horn

Originally Posted by Henry Burris

You should keep the religious discussions to the Bar Scene, DB...

To be fair, Dag was the one who brought up the religious aspects.

Originally Posted by The Benjamin

Exactly. A man's religion does not make him a safer pick, or less likely to toe the line or cross it.

yep.. which is why said like the work ethic and desire for education from Carimi .. not because he's religious or not... leave that out of football discussions

True enough.

All that NFL money waiting for Stephen Paea? Oregon State star can't wait to take care of his parents

By Lindsay Schnell, The Oregonian The Oregonian

CORVALLIS -- Ben Paea would give anything to be here right now, hanging out with his boys, cracking jokes and doling out fatherly advice as he settled into his son's apartment.

But rather than planning his trip to Seattle for this weekend's Oregon State-Washington game, the father of OSU star defensive tackle Stephen Paea will still be in Tonga, lugging crates full of food to American Samoa.

"It breaks my heart because I'm not there," Ben says by phone 5,000 miles away, his voice catching. "I know very well that if I was there it would be a different Stephen. If I were there, after the game, he'd run to the crowd where parents sit and yell out, 'Where's my dad? Where's my dad?'"

Instead, Stephen's mom and twin brother will fill in for Ben's absence. After Ana finishes her day as a caretaker in Los Altos, Calif., she and Will, the younger twin by six minutes, will hop on a plane to Seattle tonight.

Too many times to count, Stephen Paea has told his mom, "Just keep hanging in there." He knows her body can't take much more work. He knows his family wishes to be together, but that they need Ben's job in Tonga to pay for everything... until he's turned pro.

That's what made his decision to return for this, his senior year in Corvallis, so difficult. But when his mother assured him the family could afford him staying to get his sociology degree -- which will be the first of any kind in the Paea family -- he knew he wanted to come back.

In football circles, Stephen Paea is known as the kid who started playing late, and caught on fast. Leave the 6-foot-1, 300-pound Paea one-on-one with a lineman, and your quarterback might be running for his life.

"When you sack a quarterback," Paea says, "there's this moment, right before, where you get goosebumps."

But beyond football is a 22-year-old trying desperately to make his family proud. Paea is projected as a high first-round pro pick next year but wants to make sure he stays humble.

"The NFL, it's a lot of money," Paea says. "That's how I can retire my mom, retire my dad. Both of them work, supporting us. ... It would be a dream come true, to take care of them."

In Tonga, Paea was a rugby star, the type of power player who scored at will.

"It's funny because there's not social places for kids to go in Tonga," Will Paea says. "We didn't have parks or Six Flags or Disneyland, so every weekend me and Stephen would sneak out of the house and go watch rugby, dreaming we would be like them."

When they finally started playing, Stephen's strength and explosiveness -- the traits NFL scouts covet -- stood out. Often, it took dozens of players to bring him down. It was no surprise to Will, whose twin brother used to steal his baby bottles, which could explain why Stephen has 4 inches and 75 pounds on Will today.

Four people would jump on him," Will says, "and he'd still score, carrying them the whole way."

If they'd stayed in Tonga, Stephen would have probably gone to New Zealand or Australia to become a professional rugby player, where kids as young as 17 turn pro.

"Rugby is like sports fever," Ben Paea says. "From England to Africa, rugby is a very, very major sport. If he weren't a defensive tackle, he would be the best player in rugby."

But the Paea family saw more opportunity for education in the United States. Ana went first to prepare for her family's arrival. Ben followed his wife later but has had to return to Tonga regularly to continue working. When the boys, then 16, landed in San Francisco, they couldn't find Ana and, because they didn't speak English, struggled to communicate that they were lost.

"We didn't have a cell phone then," Stephen says, laughing. "By the time we got to the airport, we were trying to look for a phone like we saw in the movies, but we didn't know we had to use change. We were asking security guards, 'Call mom?' because that's all we could say."

Eventually, the boys found Ana, and the family took a Greyhound bus to Kansas -- a four-day trip -- to meet relatives. A year later they moved to Utah, where Stephen got his first taste of football.

Louis Wong, the coach at Timpview High School in Provo, Utah, says he has never had a player as raw as Paea.

"Lots of people, they questioned his height," Wong says. "I looked past that. I knew if he had a coach that was patient enough he could play at the next level."

Colleges had their doubts, so Paea enrolled at Snow Community College with Will, and helped the Badgers to an undefeated record and No. 3 national ranking. Though Utah and BYU were both interested in Paea, they wanted him to go back to Snow for another year. Paea wasn't interested. Instead, he found his way to Corvallis, far from family and friends.

When Joe Seumalo went to Snow to recruit Sioeli Nau, a former defensive tackle for the Beavers, Nau told Seumalo one thing before he walked out of the room: "Make sure you come back and get Stephen Paea."

Seumalo was skeptical -- Paea didn't even start at Snow -- but after watching Paea play, Seumalo knew OSU had uncovered someone special.

"We looked at the tape and six plays, that's all it took," Seumalo says. "Six plays and that was it. He was raw, but we saw that explosiveness. Six plays, and I handed the tape to (defensive coordinator) Mark Banker."

Now in his third season, Paea has blossomed into a star in Corvallis. In 2009 he led OSU with 8.5 tackles for loss and three sacks; five games into 2010, Paea has already matched his sack total from last season.

"He's very young in his football life compared to most guys," OSU coach Mike Riley says. "His best football is still ahead of him."

It took Paea time to adjust to being alone in Corvallis. In Tonga the Paea house was the only one in the neighborhood with a TV, and friends and cousins would often pile into the living room and fall asleep in a tangle of bodies. It was, Paea says, a sleepover every night.

At the end of the month, Ben will finally arrive in Corvallis, and he and Will plan to move in with Stephen for the rest of the season.

It will be, Stephen Paea says, just like it used to be on the island. The brothers even expect to give up the apartment's one bed to their dad and sleep on the floor in the living room.

"It doesn't matter how far I go," he says. "I'm still a brother. I'm still a son."