The Nkemdiche era of Ole Miss football was a rocky one.
Older brother Denzel Nkemdiche committed to Ole Miss, helped bring his 5-star rated brother Robert with him and then went on to record 82 tackles, 3 sacks and 3 interceptions as a true freshman, earning him Freshman All-American honors. The Nkemdiches played football at Gwinnett’s Grayson High School.
The two brothers were also sued for $2 million over a fight, Denzel ended up in the hospital and disappeared from the football program for a while, and Robert came crashing through a fourth floor window of an Atlanta hotel right before the Sugar Bowl.
On Tuesday, Denzel opened up about some of the more tumultuous history of his college football career on the Talk of Champions podcast with Ben Garrett and Kentrell Lockett, and opened up about his senior season when he "lost his passion for football."
“I will say I partook in some drug use while I was in college,” Nkemdiche told Garrett and Lockett. “I went down the road of LSD, Acid, whatever you want to call it. People may have their judgments on that but I don’t believe in any coincidences… That’s what happened (his senior year). I went down that path, I’m clean now, I’m drug-free now.”
Now working on a career in music, Nkemdiche said that a lot of his problems come back to lies that he told himself, and that one of the biggest things he’s had to work on is being open with himself and his loved ones.
“Every lie I was telling [my girlfriend], I was telling myself because before you can tell a lie, you have to believe it,” Nkemdiche said. “You pretty much allow yourself to believe your lies at the end of the day… It’s hard to live a blissful, genuine life, a true life down the right path if you are telling lies. You never go forward by lying about anything to anyone, any situation.”
You can listen to the entire podcast with Nkemdiche below:
