The Absolutes of Oliver Lundberg
Back achieves a dream seen as improbable back home
Mike Brohard
The skillset of a player isn’t limited to the physical gifts. What some refer to as intangibles – character traits by others – often become the deciding factors in how an athlete develops.
Is there a passion? A dedication? An intention behind the actions?
When it comes to analyzing Oliver Lundberg, those factors are only spoken of in terms of absolutes.
“He loves football. He's driven to be the best he can be,” Colorado State coach Jim Mora said. “He's one of the hardest workers we have. He hasn't played a lot of football, but he, every day, learns something new. We have complete trust in him. And his fire burns bright, man.
“I mean, he's a passionate kid. It means a lot to him, obviously.”
Quite obviously.
Growing up in the United States, a kid can throw a skinny stick and hit a local football team. In Sweden, the only true football is futbol. It’s one of the most popular sports in the Scandinavian country, right along with hockey. Football? Not in a country which has produced a medal winner in every edition of the Winter Olympic Games.
Lundberg played both growing up in Gothenburg, Sweden. He was too physical. Around the age of 11 he found American football by chance. It led to an obsession of sorts. He watched videos. He practiced on his own. He watched more videos. He was hooked in the most natural of ways.
“I saw that a popular kid was starting to play it; he posted a picture. And I did an Oklahoma drill,” Lundberg said. “I used to run for everybody, and I fell in love with the sport. Then I told my boy, Thomas (Collins), this is it. Then he started with me, and after that, we've been going at it every day.”
He and Collins, now a defensive tackle at UCF, would practice what they could learn online in a local park. They grew up on the same street – just one house between them – and it took Lundberg a year to coax his best friend to play with him.
Finding a team in a city where the population was greater than 500,000 at the time – nearly a million in the surrounding area – was leta efter en nål i en höstack.
“I had to travel. I'm very thankful, because we had one football team in my city, Gothenburg. You still had to drive about 40 minutes to get there,” Lundberg said. “It was only one team, and it was, you know, not the best field.
“There was just mud everywhere and a tilting field and all that stuff. But it was only one team in my whole city. And every team we had to play, we had to travel the whole country, all the way up north, about five hours to the east. It was not the easiest.”
The more they learned, the more they loved playing. To some degree, the more people told them they were chasing an impossible dream, particularly when they decided they were going to play in college in America, drove them more. Being told no wasn’t a door closed, it was an opportunity manifesting.
If you were going to be good in Sweden, the only option was to attend RIG Academy, a developmental school for the sport and others. There, they could practice every day as well as attend classes. It additionally included theory sessions to learn about nutrition, anatomy, strength and conditioning and leadership. Attending meant moving six hours away from home.
There are only 30 players on the team at a time, 10 from each of the three classes. There are tryouts, and each year, only 10 players are selected. Lundberg and Collins were accepted, the first step toward their goal.
“I was just thinking about it last night. It's crazy how it was literally a dream,” Collins said. “We used to be in his room -- sit in his room for hours -- and just watch under-the-radar videos. Now we're out here actually playing Division I football.
“So it is a dream come true. And I'm just hoping one day we can play each other or be on the same team. That'd be nice, just get a picture together here to just kind of conclude that whole story.”
They have plenty of pictures from the old days, two kids doing something none of their friends did. Or thought about. Doing something none of them understood. Their peers wanted to be Peter Forsberg or Zlatan Ibrahimovic, not Tom Brady. Makes sense, considering only two Swedish natives have ever played in the NFL.
Not that Lundberg was ever deterred. Not when he was one of the biggest kids playing on the lines before becoming one of the fastest players and moving to running back. Lundberg and Collins were confident when they tried out for RIG Academy, a place where they found a few others from the country with the same dream.
Theodor Melin Norstrom is playing tight end at SMU. Lucas Simmons is on the offensive line at Wisconsin.
The recruiting part was different, naturally. They weren’t being tracked by the recruiting sites, and getting noticed required giving up a couple of summers, long months of traveling as a group from one college camp with PPI Recruits to the next trying to catch the eye of a staff. They were shooting for the stars, not collecting them.
Because nobody … You're not gonna want it more than Ollie.Mel Brown
The first summer spent on small buses for long hours came Lundberg’s sophomore year. He came back from that trip having drawn no interest but generating more desire.
“I'm so used to people telling me, no, it's not possible. I'm so used to it,” he said. “Somebody telling me no, or any kind of step back, I just get more hungry. So, I got even more hungry. I had a crazy good off-season. I ran good times. I got stronger. I got faster.
“Every time I get a no, or I lose, or take a step back, I see it as an opportunity to learn. What can I get better at because I know my weaknesses.”
The second time around, after his senior year, multiple schools were lined up, and he chose UConn having never stepped foot on campus. It was there he met Mel Brown, both together again in the CSU running backs room.
From the first day, Brown said he could tell Lundberg was unique. Then he heard his story and understood why the kid was built different -- never relented, always pushed forward. As Brown said, you can’t afford to have a bad day at practice because Lundberg is nipping at your heels.
“Because nobody … You're not gonna want it more than Ollie,” Brown said. He's traveling across Europe to play football. He came all the way over here, going to all these camps. He told me about being at camp at Charlotte, being at a camp at Kentucky, just going through all these things and coaches looking at him, might be looking over him, and looking at other guys. But they're not working like him. It's the reason he got here, and it's the reason he's still here, and it's the reason this staff brought him here, brought him here with us.
“He brings a level of intent that is hard to match.”
Colorado State running backs coach David Hill is popular on social media for his “Sweat Equity Check” videos, meant to inspire people to bring passion to their pursuits. It didn’t take long for him to figure out Lundberg was the living embodiment of what he preaches in those clips.
Want a drill done correctly? Watch Lundberg. Want a player to push through the red line? Watch Lundberg.
“He's the gauge. He's the person that you monitor because you know that he's going to be giving 110% every rep,” Hill said. “And if he's really tired, then that means the tank is really empty. It's awesome. As a coach, that's what you want.
“You want kids like that. You want people who love the game, who give everything, you know, and I've been around some really good players. So you know what it looks like. So I've been around the Brock Bowers that it looked just the same way. Just every single rep looked like a game rep. And the Ladd McConkeys. And so when you come from a place like Georgia and you see these people, the success which translates to the NFL, you know exactly what it should look like. He has that. He has that same motor that those players had.”
Hill’s room will not be short on talent. Durell Robinson and Brown have both had success in the past at UConn in the system, and Malichi Greaves makes a fourth former Huskie in the group which extends seven deep.
Lundberg works with the intensity he does to progress, to prove he belongs on the field. There’s will always be a bit of underdog in him, and in some ways, he seeks it out. He was the top running back in Sweden, but quickly found there was much about the sport he hadn’t been exposed to in terms of understanding the game. The playbook was intense. Coming to grips with the how and why of an offensive system, how runs were set up and how plays stacked together has helped his mental acuity, which in turn has aided his physical progress.
“Every doubt is a challenge. And after that, I just tried to learn from it,” Lundberg said. “Every ‘L’ I ever take, every step back, I've just tried to learn from it. Last year I tried to learn from a lot of things, because that was the first time I got to play on the field. I played in 10 games. So after I got put in the game, that's when I really started to evaluate my game. What do I need to do to get better? What am I missing? What's the missing piece for me to be the best?”
The 40 minutes to find a youth team became 330 minutes to get to an academy to cover the final 16-plus hours to reach his dream of playing college football at the highest level. A big part of what has made it all worth it is reaching it with a group of friends from back home.
They don’t see each other as much, but they still talk all the time. They lean on each other, encourage each other.
“Especially when we've got a lot of football going on, that's when we talk weekly. I would say I look up to those guys because they went through exactly the same thing I did, the recruiting process, being from Sweden and all that,” Lundberg said. “We went to the same high school, and we all had to put in that extra work to catch up at the American level because we don't get enough coaches over there.”
He doesn’t worry about who or what is in front of him because he knows what he’s put behind him. A lot of miles. A lot of videos. A lot of naysayers.
With Lundburg, no doesn’t stand a chance. Nor does a single rep in practice.
“That's the thing about me. I always compete. I never shy away from a competition,” he said. “Freshman year I competed. I didn't play, but I still competed, and I got so much better from that. Last year, I ended up getting 120 yards even if I was not supposed to. Now, I'm competing again. I won't shy away from anything.
“This is my personality. If I aim for the stars, I’ll land on the moon, at the worst.”
Absolutely creating a worthwhile dream to chase.
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