Cornerback and senior Obi Nwosu suffers from a knee tracking disorder in his right knee. Now, if any of you know Obi, which I’m sure you do, you know how upbeat and outgoing of a person he usually is. So what happens when a person like him loses something that is so important to them?

“At first (when I got hurt), I did a lot of crying,” Nwosu said while laughing. “But post-crying, I kind of sucked it up and made myself laugh. This may sound dumb but I used to have little jokes during practice that I would use to make myself laugh, so I had to make up new jokes to tell myself.”

While the injury may have temporarily taken away football, Nwosu said it actually affected his attitude in a positive way.

“I think my attitude in general got better because I didn’t have football so I found other things to balance out my life,” he said.

His attitude, however, didn’t change how much he misses the game.

“The hardest part is watching the guys practice and play,” he said. “There’s this drill that the cornerbacks do, and when I watch them do it now I hear the sounds of their helmets cracking, and it’s really tough to watch because my body can’t do it. It’s not a mental thing, my body just physically can’t do it.”

We can all learn a lot from Obi, not only sports fans. When things come at us, we have to learn to either dwell on them or accept it and move on. Obi clearly has accepted it, and said it changed his views on some things.

“Opportunities are fleeting, you never know when it’s your last chance to do whatever you may be doing,” he said, becoming serious. “Appreciate the things that you might not appreciate normally because when you lose what you love, all you have left are the things that you didn’t appreciate as much. I think it wouldn’t be as bad to lose the thing you loved most if you appreciated everything more.

“When you get hurt you realize how much of your life sports affect past just developing us physically. It also affects you spiritually and emotionally, which I think we just take for granted until it’s gone.”

It’s true. We don’t realize how much sports change our personality or impact our lives. Hopefully, we can all learn a little something from Obi about taking things for granted without going through an experience like this on our own.

Of course, after saying hi or making an amusing remark to nearly everyone who walked by in the hall during an interview, Obi once again turned into his upbeat self when talking about if all of this will affect his sense of humor.

“I think I might actually get funnier,” he said with a smile. “Personally, I think I’m hilarious. Having one gimp knee is going to be a good look for comedy.”