Player Prompt

What started as a little inside joke has become a reminder of home and why M’Baku Olubori keeps grinding toward being a star. A large part of Nigerian culture is the food, and being a total goof, Baku’s friend, Chinyelu Sani of the WBSL’s Columbus Cosmos, has been writing “fufu” on every new pair of shoes he wears in the league. Fufu, for those who don’t know, is a West African food made of boiled cassava mixed with either green plaintain or cocoyam that they mix with their native thick stews. You roll it into little balls and dip it in something like egusi soup. Chin loves fufu (not that Baku doesn’t), so he rolled with it.

Initially, Baku found this corny, but Chinyelu snuck into his gear last offseason and wrote fufu on the side of Baku’s shoulder pads. Baku found this and laughed. Now, Baku started writing it on his gear as well, as a solidarity thing with his friends and his home country. It’s not the fanciest or most exciting little quirk, but it works for Baku (especially as he’s broken out as a top line player for the Elk).