It took a world of sacrifice for this pass rusher to find a home at Boise State
Boise State fans have been accustomed to seeing the guy wearing No. 91 bursting through the opponent’s offensive line to drag down the quarterback.
Egyptian-born Ahmed Hassanein was the No. 91 who recorded 12.5 sacks in the 2023 season and 9.5 more last year, when he helped the Broncos’ defense lead the nation in sacks, with 55. It led to his selection by the Detroit Lions in the NFL Draft.
With Hassanein barely out the door, another player with African roots — who could become the team’s next big pass rusher — is pulling the 91 jersey over his head.
Freshman Bol Bol, a Canadian-born edge rusher of South Sudanese descent, is wrapping up his first fall camp at Boise State, and the coaching staff has been impressed.
“He is growing a lot,” head coach Spencer Danielson said. “I’m really excited about where his development is going.”
Bol has room to grow physically as well as in football IQ. The long-limbed teenager stands at 6-foot-4 and weighs 240 pounds. On Wednesday afternoon at the Bleymaier Football Center, he had to sit down on a counter, long legs still bent, just to be eye level with the circle of cameras around him.
It’s not just the foreign relations and jersey number — which Bol said he got randomly — that tie Bol and Hassanein together. Neither grew up playing American football.
Until high school, Bol didn’t even like the sport.
“I was a basketball player in school,” Bol said Wednesday. “Little brother and older brother both played basketball.”
It wasn’t until the eighth grade that Bol went through a huge growth spurt, and coaches began pushing him to play football. At the time, his mother — who moved the family from South Sudan to Kenya and then Alberta, Canada, because of the Second South Sudanese Civil War — didn’t even know anything about the sport.
“Anytime I speak to my mom about football, she has no clue what I’m saying,” Bol said. “When I told her I got a Division I offer, she didn’t know what that meant, so I just told her I got a full-ride scholarship. So she got happy after that.”
Bol’s mother, Ayen, made the sacrifices for her son to reach that level.
After three years of high school football in Canada, one of Bol’s football coaches convinced her that her son had to play in the United States to gain recognition. The family moved to Yelm, Washington, south of Seattle for Bol’s senior year, and it took just three games for scouts to start buzzing around him. He was ranked the No. 2 edge recruit in Washington by ESPN and received offers from Boise State and Cal.
Bol had at least eight sacks through the first two weeks of fall camp, according to Danielson, and on Wednesday, Bol said he’s aiming to be second in the rotation at edge this year.
But it’s more than football for Bol. He’s going to college, and he talked about how happy he was to receive a scholarship after all his mom and family have been through.
“It’s a blessing. My mom, she raised four kids by herself. Without football, I would have no idea how I would pay for school,” Bol said. “We’ve been through struggles growing up, especially being a single parent coming from a new country. So it’s a blessing having a full ride and just having the opportunity to be here.”
