ALLEN PARK, Mich. – The first gift Ziggy Ansah, the Detroit Lions’ first-round pick, received after arriving in town was a pair of real glasses with actual frames.
It was a friendly jab for his unusual look at Radio City Music Hall on draft night, when he wore 3D glasses with black frames and no lenses.
“This is an upgrade,” Ansah said of the new glasses during his introductory news conference Friday afternoon. “This is Detroit welcoming me here.”
Ansah, a native of Ghana, Africa, received quite a bit of publicity for his fashion statement at the draft. He picked up the 3D glasses a couple years ago when he attended the movie, “Thor.”
They’ve become somewhat of a trademark for him and a little inside joke with friends.
“That’s something that I wore back at BYU and people know me for that,” Ansah explained. “My friends dared me to where it. I was like, ‘Why not?’”
Ansah, who has only played football for three years, is considered by some to be a “boom or bust” draft pick.
If he’s a bust, Ansah, a defensive end who will wear No. 94 for the Lions, could consider stand-up comedy for his next career. He quickly showed Lions fans that he has a good sense of humor with a series of one-liners, deadpans and timely grins:
• On taking up football after getting cut twice by the BYU basketball team: “One thing I’ve got to do when I go back to Utah, I’m going to go to coach (Dave) Rose, the head basketball coach, and thank him so much for not letting me play.”
• On receiving an unusual Actuarial Science degree at BYU: “I get a lot of that. That’s why I just say statistics. It’s just basically insurance, calculating risk.”
• On how much of a risk the Lions took in drafting a player as inexperienced as he is: “I already did the calculation and it’s personal, sorry.”
• On putting on a football uniform for the first time in 2010: “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was a mess. My teammates helped me put on all of my pads right. I think I put my thigh pad in my knee pad. It wasn’t going in.”
• On whether he hates quarterbacks: “I don’t know if I want to use hate. You can’t concentrate if you hate somebody. You’ve got to love him. If you love somebody, you want to grab them. I love quarterbacks.”
• After being asked three questions at one time by a reporter: “That’s a lot of questions, man.”
• On trying out for basketball: “I was a power forward. I just tried to model my game like LeBron James.”
• On whether he has watched more NBA or NFL games? “Is that a trick question? I would say I have watched more basketball games than football games.”
• On what he wants to buy after signing his contract with the Lions, who are owned by the Ford family: “I wouldn’t mind getting me a Ford or a Lincoln, you know.”
• On what he gets asked about living in Africa: “There are all sort of funny questions that people ask me. ‘Did you see lions in your backyard?’ ‘No, I actually saw a lion for the first time when I went to the San Diego Zoo.’”
Ba-dum-DUM.
