A tantalising thought of what could have been may always linger in the background for Samuel Oram-Jones. But there are few on the planet who can say they share his story. That’s even before Japanese karaoke…

He takes pride in sporting exclusivity as the globe-trotting petrol head-turned-end zone frequenter, where race helmets became football helmets and grid places became, well, gridiron.

“In my head, I guess for a really long time, I still should have been on a Formula One grid,” he tells Sky Sports, as part of ‘NFL to the World’. “I look back at these times of adversity and I’m so grateful for them because however it works out, you always find yourself in a good place at the end,” he says.

His list of sporting teammates, counterparts, friends and acquaintances ranges from Max Verstappen to Frank Gore and George Russell to Fred Kerley. His list of sporting homes and headquarters stretches from Durham to Nashville and Prague to Japan. He has spanned thousands of miles by foot, by race car and by plane, unknowingly, inadvertently compiling a resume as one of the most unique fragments to football’s international expansion.

Oram-Jones spent last season playing at running back for the Berlin Thunder in the European League of Football. Before then he had immersed himself in Asia’s rich football history with the All Mitsubishi Lions of Japan’s iconic X-League. Before then he had tackled the cut-throat world of college football with Vanderbilt and USC. Before then, he had been on a star-studded climb towards a life in Formula One.

Doors slammed shut, surgeries, a Tokyo adventure and an imperfect end to his racing career led him down a winding road to this point; such is the life of a running back, he has forged a patience to wait for his lane and a knack for attacking and adapting to unforeseen openings. He even once had an offensive coordinator cut players so he himself could play.

Life on the track

Oram-Jones began karting at around the age of eight and by 13 was the youngest Formula BMW driver in history, competing at the Talent Cup at Valencia and Brands Hatch. He would soon earn his way onto the McLaren Young Driver programme and later raced Formula Renault and Formula Ford up until the age of 18.

“There was a time when I was top 10 in the world. Everything came to a really abrupt stop. It was a family decision, it wasn’t anything to do with me,” he says.

“Half my old team is on the current grid now. I was teammates with Max (Verstappen), George (Russell), (Charles) Leclerc, Lance (Stroll), I’ve raced against Yuki (Tsunoda) and (Nikita) Mazepin, Álex Palou was a competitor of mine and just won Indy500.”

He recalls one of his final qualifying races in karting when he finished second behind IndyCar driver Callum Ilott, followed by Russell down in 10th. Lando Norris had been in the class below, qualifying for pole on that occasion with Oscar Piastri seventh or eighth.

“There’s a funny picture of me, Russell, Billy Monger and Callum Ilott at one of the international races, it might have been the European Championship, I was like fifth or something,” he continues.

“You can count everyone in the race. It’s Russell of Mercedes, Leclerc of Ferrari, Alex Albon of Williams, Antonio Fuoco is Ferrari in the FIA World Endurance Championship, IndyCar champion Palou and me – American football. Everyone around me is still in motorsport.

“If I continued racing, I would be a professional driver today for sure. It’s difficult to say whether you would make it to F1 because so many guys should have been in F1 but aren’t. I can say for sure I would have had a shot at it through Formula Two.”

Oram-Jones was a two-time winner of the Lewis Hamilton True Grit award as well as later partaking in simulator work with Red Bull. Look across an F1 grid on any given Sunday and there is a chance he has gone wheel-to-wheel with most of the drivers present.

“In the end, it just didn’t happen,” he says. “Decisions by people much more important than me were made. I had to find a way to be special somewhere else…”

From the grid to gridiron

He started playing football at Durham University where he won a national championship before being encouraged to pursue a Division I college football career in the States. Before he knew it, he had secured a transfer to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

He arrived with his transfer papers, a pipe dream and little else, heading straight to see the Head of Player Personnel – only to be told to come back on Monday. Emails went unanswered, try-out attempts were postponed, and Oram-Jones couldn’t even make it past the front desk for talks with coaches, before eventually being told the team had enough running backs. Overwhelming excitement had rapidly evolved into isolation and a foiled risk in an unknown land.

“I remember I didn’t tell my family a word. I didn’t say anything to anybody, I had this catastrophic failure,” he says.

He decided to attend a Tennessee Titans scrimmage at Nissan Stadium one evening, plotting his route to then-head coach Mike Vrabel for advice on how to hurdle his initial rejection.

“I see this gate, I’m thinking ‘I look like a football player, maybe I can get through’, so I hop over the gate and get to Coach Vrabel and ask for 10 seconds of his time,” he recalls.

Vrabel told him to find Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason; his next objective. And so he studied the team facilities, the locations of the entrances and exits, in a detailed – non-stalkerish – reconnaissance mission that sought to position him perfectly for a not-so-chance meeting with Mason.

“I’d go and watch practice and throw back the balls that the kickers kicked into the volleyball courts,” he said. “When I later made the team the players would be like ‘you’re that guy that threw the balls back!’ It was funny.”

He spots Mason leaving the facility one night, approaching him to plead for 20 seconds in which to explain both his dilemma and potential. Mason, initially dismissive, grants him a meeting in his office at 7am the next morning, at which he offers Oram-Jones a try-out but zero special treatment.

Oram-Jones sprints and catches and cuts and jukes his way to exhaustion at his trial session. It was for nothing.

“I saw it became a joke, one of the coaches later told me they worked me that hard because they wanted me to leave them alone, there was no real workout, it wasn’t a real thing,” he says.

“I remember going outside and I sat on a bench right outside and I just didn’t move. I didn’t say anything for like an hour. I just thought that was it, that’s the end of this football career, that’s the end of my sporting career.”

The following day he attended Vanderbilt’s game against the Georgia Bulldogs, in jaw-dropping awe of the pageantry and prestige of college football. He watches as running back Jamauri Wakefield goes down with a broken fibula. Chance.

Oram-Jones received a call the next morning. He is offered a scout team position. He isn’t allowed in the facility, he isn’t allowed in the weight room, he isn’t allowed in the hot tub, he isn’t allowed to suit up, he isn’t allowed to rehab with the team, he doesn’t have a jersey. But he has a chance.

“A small victory, but a victory,” he explains.

He remembers being horse-collared out of a running back drill by a coach demanding ‘who the f*** are you?’ as they took an initial dislike to the unfamiliar European guy. Three weeks later he was named Scout Team Player of the Week, before earning himself a jersey and by the end of the season receiving encouragement by Coach Mason to return the following year with an increased role potentially on offer. Only for Covid to shut down college sports. Square one.

From Nashville to Prague

He remained in the US, on advice from Vanderbilt’s international office, and travelled to Florida to train with NFL legend Frank Gore and New York Giants back Devin Singletary, before transferring to USC. Another setback beckoned.

“Everything’s going well for me until my birthday, super weird,” he explains. “One day before the game at Arizona State we’re running around, I’m supposed to be on special teams and this is a really, really good deal for me.

“I take this really nasty roll-up tackle, I look back at my foot and it’s facing the wrong way.”

Surgery was required and his year was ultimately over. He called his mother and father to tell them the news in the car on the way to hospital, devastated by his latest obstacle. By the time he is back now-Kansas City Chiefs running back Keaontay Ingram is in the backfield as Oram-Jones reverts to scout team duties.

From there he is invited to the Canadian Football League Combine, before being informed weeks before his Pro Day that he required a second operation due to a surgical error. He resumes his preparations following surgery by linking up with Los Angeles Rams running back Kyren Williams and Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jaylen Warren in Florida, grinding through the pain in order to get himself ready.

Having then been told the BC Lions were interested in his services – including on draft day itself – Oram-Jones was forced to watch as they instead selected a defensive lineman. They had even lined up broadcast interviews such was the anticipation he would be picked. Again he wondered if his chances were over.

Next stop: the Prague Lions in the ELF in 2023.

“I arrive in Prague, week one, and there’s a huge administrative issue, there’s no money, guys haven’t been paid, my entire offensive line quits, the head coach steps down. Our quarterback gets hurt, doesn’t get paid, and leaves,” he says.

“I’m like, ‘you’re kidding, right?.”

He laughs at the memory of being unable to communicate with his new French offensive lineman.

After one season Oram-Jones moves onto XFL try-outs back in the States, before being told the league was unable to provide visas for international players at that time. And so he eventually found his way to Amarillo in Texas with a view to competing in an indoor football league. The air miles are stacking up.

“They might be professional or what have you, but this was crazy,” he says. “This was guys waking up at 4am in the morning and hitting random dudes, guys are fighting in the middle of practice.

“Then the offensive coordinator makes a decision to cut some extra running backs, including myself, so that he himself could suit up and play running back for this team.”

Just checking you’re still with us, readers? Oram-Jones could have been forgiven for calling it quits at this point.

“This is absurd at this point,” he laughs.

Following turbulence in Texas he travelled to Los Angeles to work out with the Team USA track team, training alongside Olympic 100m silver medallist Fred Kerley.

Next stop: the All Mitsubishi Lions in Tokyo, Japan. July 2024.

Karaoke in Japan

With a move to Tokyo came an “immense culture shock”. But so too another once-unlikely learning experience entailing a new-found adoration for the country’s natural beauty, a discovery of its fashion iconicity, an education in its rich traditions, an insight into its tremendous diversity and a new language.

He studied Japanese diligently and leaned on kanji – logographic Chinese characters – to navigate the basics, even just the meaning of street signs around the city.

“The Japanese people are so eager to learn and also to teach foreign people about themselves, they’re so forthcoming that anytime you meet somebody, if they can help you, they’re so respectful in the way that they do with understanding,” he explains.

“Even the way you hold chopsticks could be offensive to some Japanese people, but they would teach you immediately how to fix it in a helpful way and understand you aren’t from here.

“There are such small differences in their culture that is really heavily enforced and based on respect. Children take themselves to school and back on the train at like the age of five, but in Europe you might never leave your child on the train at that age. If I’d left my bike completely unattended for like a day on the side of my house, I could come back in a day and it will be right there.”

Oram-Jones points to Fujitsu and Panasonic as the two dominant teams in Japan, representing two large corporations who utilise Japanese quarterbacks in order to shrewdly allocate their limited foreign slots to other marquee positions. Corporations in Japan famously hire players to part-time ‘office jobs’ that enable them to spend half of the week focusing on football. They are offered housing, phones, public transport passes and good salaries. Sure, they work. But football, the love of which stems from post-World War II American influence, is paramount.

“Mitsubishi specifically was made up of Tokio Marine, which is a large insurance company, Mitsubishi Bank and Mitsubishi Electric,” he explains. “All three very prestigious companies in Japan, really hard to get into these companies. So these guys don’t really recruit at university, they just have a bunch of bankers really and financiers that just happen to like football.”

He describes the X-League as the most professional league he has encountered outside of the United States, but underlines its traditional search for incremental gains as opposed to the ‘zero to a hundred’ pace and urgency he had witnessed before heading to Japan. The idea being that the Japanese allow themselves constant room for steady growth as opposed to teeing up adversity as other cultures around the world might by way of their full-throttle ethos. While American abides by ‘win now’, the Japanese have faith in eventual wins.

In that regard, it would become a ‘serene’ change of environment and mindset for Oram-Jones, whose pursuit of opportunity thus far had been the definition of frantic, unpredictable and adversity-prone – not by his own making.

“There’s a way of life that exists out there that is so different from the States, but it’s not to say that it’s bad because there’s so much good that comes from these people, they are very efficient,” he continues.

“They’re running their league over there and they’re not doing as well on social media because their culture tells them they shouldn’t try and make these huge gains and jump on this form of media that has arisen really quickly.

“Japan has focused on ‘we just want to run professionally’, and sure enough, it is the most professionally run league outside of North America.”

He laughs that he will now never go shopping in the UK or United States, such is the offering in Japan. And for another small factoid – the Japanese love karaoke.

“You wouldn’t think of it because they’re all super serious, but a huge way of doing business deals, where in the US it might be golf or in the UK going to the football game, is drinking and karaoke,” he laughs.

“They love to drink beer, they lose Asahi and for whatever reason karaoke is the bigger deal. If we have a good game we’ll go for beer and karaoke, it’s really incredible. Small facets of their culture is insane.”

“Looking back it’s probably the best football experience I’ve had overall, including college. It’s just an incredible place to be.”

By now it has become a Formula One-esque global road trip, Oram-Jones emerging as something of an unofficial ambassador for football overseas alongside the NFL’s fierce campaign to establish new host territories and the growth of flag football ahead of its Olympic debut in 2028.

He could have resented sport following his racing career. He could have quit in that first month at Vanderbilt, he could have quit when the pandemic struck, he could have quit when his ankle was facing the wrong way at USC, he could have quit when the CFL overlooked him, he could have quit when his own offensive coordinator decided to start himself, he could have quit when the rest of his team quit in Prague. Had he done so, he wouldn’t boast a novel-worthy narrative.

“I’m so fond of all of these times that I’ve had in Europe or in racing or Durham or in Japan. Even if they were difficult or even if I’ve had doors shut in my face or I had to break down doors they’re still incredible situations,” he says.

Where next?

NFL to the World

Sky Sports NFL’s new series ‘NFL to the World’ shines a light on stories of how American Football has expanded beyond the borders of the United States.

Part One: Meet the man leading Wheelchair American Football’s Paralympic dream

Meet Geraint Griffiths, the man leading Wheelchair American Football’s pursuit of a dream place at the Paralympic Games.

Part Two: The NFL Academy dancer who escaped Nigeria’s violent ‘trenches’

Benson Jerry. The kid with the fancy footwork. The kid that borrowed 30p for the bus. The kid that had never tried lasagne. The kid that had never flown. The no-longer-a-kid becoming the inspiration kids like him never had.

Part Three: How Ireland became a powerhouse for the NFL’s global expansion

They support in unwavering numbers, they amplify at bar-raising levels, they romanticise their sporting legacy, they immerse themselves in football, they unite to champion their stage like few others, they welcome the world, and they kick; boy, can they kick. Ireland has become a rousing cocktail for the sport’s international growth and one of football’s most multi-faceted homes from home.

Part Four: From the beaches to the world… Meet the face of Brazilian football

Gabi Bankhardt is Samba. She is Bossa Nova. She is Christ the Redeemer and she is Carnival. She is the favelas. She is churrasco and she is Copacabana. She is mutirão.

We meet Brazil Flag Football ambassador Gabi Bankhardt as she inspires football’s explosion in Latin America.

Watch the 2025 NFL season live on Sky Sports, including every London and European game as well as every minute of the playoffs and Super Bowl LX; Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW.