Racing has helped Oram-Jones on football field as he prepares for CFL Global draft

“When I was teammates with Leclerc, for example, they sent him and I on the track to race one-on-one and I remember he won by a couple of tenths. Now I look at him and I’m like, ‘You’re Ferrari’s No. 1 driver, you just won the Bahrain Grand Prix, and I was right there.’ For sure I think, ‘What if,’ but at this point it’s spilled milk under the bridge. I’m certainly doing all I can to make football my life-long dream and goal now and hopefully I can do a good job of it this weekend.”

Oram-Jones gave up racing — he’d been offered an F3 ride — to attend Durham University in England to pursue a business and management degree.

“No regrets at all,” he said. “I put my best foot forward in whatever I’m doing and if it works out, it works out.

“If not, I just put the other foot forward and see where it takes me.”

 Durham University unexpectedly led Oram-Jones to taking up American football.

“I picked up the game even though I had no plan of it at all,” he said. “I was fortunate enough that running backs on scholarship at Durham took me under their wing.”

Oram-Jones helped Durham University win the 2018 Universities and Colleges Sport national title. After earning his degree, Oram-Jones then headed to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., to work on his master’s degree while also serving as a backup running back.

Then in the fall of 2020, Oram-Jones attended USC as a graduate transfer. He didn’t see any action in 2021 as a senior but was named the Trojans’ co-offensive service team player of the year.

And now he’s hoping for an opportunity to play professionally in Canada. The CFL’s 2022 Global draft is slated for May 3.

“It’s been an interesting (journey),” Oram-Jones said. “I certainly try and paint it as positive as possible (but) there’ve definitely been many hard moments in my football journey.

“But I’ve been fortunate that when I’ve trained in the off-season, pros like LeSean McCoy and Frank Gore have taken me under their wing. Hopefully I’m selected by one of the Canadian teams and a coach will do the same thing. I can assure whoever that may be, I’ll be the best study they’ve ever had.”

Oram-Jones has spent time familiarizing himself with the nuances of Canadian football. Certainly, the longer, wide field gives players more room but Oram-Jones feels the yard off the line of scrimmage could help a running back.

“They (defensive linemen) are a yard back and that’s a huge difference for a running back in terms of being able to reach your holes,” he said. “I’m at USC playing on the scout team at practice and you have big (defensive) linemen and you might get hit while you’re getting the handoff sometimes because they’re right there.

“With the longer, wider field, it’s a more pass-heavy league and at USC’s pro day I was able to run my routes smoothly, no drops. I also ran a few routes from wide receiver as well.”

Oram-Jones feels his time racing has helped him in football.

“As a driver, you’re moving from Point A to Point B in the fastest way possible while avoiding anything that comes into your way,” he said. “As a running back you’re pretty much doing the same thing if you think about it.

“Football and racing are very similar in regards to reaction time, peripheral vision, depth perception, awareness of space, foreign objects and tracking several objects at one time, definitely.”

Despite his racing background, Oram-Jones said he has no need for speed when he’s driving in public. In fact, he makes a conscious effort to travel below the speed limit.

Unless he’s approaching a roundabout, that is.

“If I come into it at 60 (kilometres an hour) I might just do the whole thing at 60,” he said with a chuckle. “But I purposely drive slow in public because I know I can drive fast.

“When I’m driving, I see things a lot further down the road because as a race driver you’re used to looking through corners and through cars while most people just look at the car ahead of them. But I’m like, ‘Oh, that car six cars down broke way too early for this corner,’ and people will be, ‘What are you looking at? There’s no way you can see that.’ But I do.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2022.

Dan Ralph, The Canadian Press