This other, foreign brand of football certainly offered immediate enticements.

“For me, it was the contact,’’ explains Kingsley Ibeh, happily standing in a thundering breeze out at McMahon Stadium late Thursday morning. “That hooked me. When I played soccer growing up, I was known to bully people. Use my body. Be physical.

“Slide tackles. Shoulder-to-shoulder.

“That kind of stuff.

“I remember early on, when I’d just started playing (this new kind of) football, running through a guy one time and my D-line coach said: ‘Good job! Keep going!’

“In my head, I’m thinking: ‘Good job?! You mean I can hit a guy like that and not get a yellow card or a red card?!’

“‘Really!?’

“‘This is great!’”

Photo by Rob McMorris

That the 23-year-old Ibeh is here at all, modelling No. 90 in red on Day One of the Stampeders Rookie Camp, is one of those crazy-happy stories that come along once in a while.

Born in Enugu, Nigeria and raised in Kaduna, he spent much of his youth barefoot, chasing a soccer ball around a pitch, fantasizing of one day being the next Jay-Jay Okocha, dubbed The Nigerian Maradona and his country’s talismanic star of two World Cups.

Arriving in the U.S. at 16, though, intent on securing a chemical engineering degree and thus his future, Ineh swapped his shin guards for shoulder pads.

By happenstance, as it turned out.

Initially, he viewed the North American version of football with utter disdain.

“I thought,’’ is his frank admission, “it was crazy.”

What triggered his transformation was a $100 bet with a cousin over Ibeh’s opinion that North American sports were wildly overrated.

Undoubtedly thinking of those days spent barefoot kicking a ball around the pitches back home, he agreed to attend a football tryout at Glendale Community College in Phoenix to settle the wager.

Something, however, had obviously been lost in translation.

“When I walked in I knew right away that I’d been mistaken,’’ he laughs.

“This wasn’t my kind of football.”

Is now.

They were open auditions. The game looked weird but oddly fun, there was the bet to consider and he was at the field already, anyway.

So …

“So I tried out. I didn’t know where to go. I just wandered over to where the guys about my size were standing, the defensive lineman, and the coach said: ‘OK, down in the three-point stance.’

“I had no idea what he was talking about. So I just squatted down. The coach is looking at me like ‘Whaaaaa …’”

Ineh’s size and athleticism were apparent, even if his grasp on the game definitely left something to be desired.

The coaching staff was impressed enough, though, to tell him that if he wanted to learn, they’d be happy to teach.

I’ve grown to love football. Love it. The practices. The training. The games.

– Rookie DL Kingsley Ibeh

After realizing lining up at receiver might be a bit of a stretch for a beginner accustomed to using his feet, not his hands, Ibeh transferred to the defensive line at Glendale, home of the Gauchos, before graduating to Topeka, Kan., and the MIAA Division II Washburn University Ichabods.

Initially, he’ll concede, the rules took some getting used to.

In the last game of his first season at Glendale, he remembers being called for PI. Problem was, he didn’t know yet what PI meant.

“So I asked the coach,’’ Ibeh laughs. “He just shook his head and told me that it meant pass interference.”

A year ago, Ibeh attended the Arizona Cardinals rookie-camp and worked out this off-season for the Seattle Seahawks.

The Stampeders’ interest was piqued after encouraging reports from Ibeh’s showing at Cardinals’ camp and so, on an invite, he hopped in his car and drove the five and half hours due west to Calgary’s open tryout in L.A.

“And here,’’ he says, “I am.”

Arriving in Canada for the first time Wednesday provided a bit of a jolt.

“The snow?’’ he laughs. “Oh, I was definitely not expecting the snow. The snow took me by surprise. Plus, all day long I was in flip-flops. My bag was stuck at the airport.

“Snow, bare feet … doesn’t matter, though. I just love being around football. Everything about it.

“I always feel like I’m playing catch-up because the other guys have been playing so much longer than me.

Photo by Rob McMorris

“Sometimes I lay in bed at night and think how crazy it’s all been. But I’ve grown to love football. Love it. The practices. The training. The games.

“Everything about it.”

And the folks back home? What do they make of this strange fixation that has led the chemical engineer-wannabe from Arizona to Kansas and now north to some place off in the Canadian wilds called Calgary?

Well, the family patriarch, Maxwell, who operated a furniture store while Kingsley was a boy, hasn’t quite grasped the nuances of football, as opposed to football.

“I was talking to my dad a few days ago about this opportunity,’’ Ibeh reports, grinning. “He told me: ‘Go out there and score some goals.’

“Sacks, for me, I guess, are like scoring goals.

“So I told him: ‘Yeah, okay dad, I’ll score some goals.’”