Zeise: “I think it’s cool because we roomed together -“
Idowu: “We roomed together freshman year!”
Zeise: “When we were together freshman year, I don’t think either of us would think we would be here today.”
Idowu: “Yeah.”
Interviewer: Which part didn’t you think would happen?
Zeise: “The fact that we’re both here.”

Four years ago, Paul Chryst’s coaching staff (or whoever was in charge of room assignments) made a logical decision and put two high school teammates together in the freshman dorms. Elijah Zeise was a scholarship wide receiver; Oluwaseun Idowu was a walk-on safety. They both had played at North Allegheny and both enrolled as freshmen at Pitt in the summer of 2014.

Four years later, Zeise is sitting in an office at Pitt’s football facility in the South Side, talking about how he and Idowu got from that freshman dorm pairing to “here.” Idowu is across the desk from him, and the two Tigers-turned-Panthers are now returning starters at linebacker for a defense that figures to be the Panthers’ best in years.

Idowu: “It’s kind of wild, honestly. When you look back: room together, come to the same school, everything we’ve done together to this point. Then the coaches change and you end up on the same side of the ball, then you’re playing the same position and then you’re on the field at the same time. It’s crazy. It’s a bunch of coincidences to get to where we’re at.”
Zeise: “It’s like, the relationship as I see it is we’re like brothers. We’re not best friends. We don’t hang out too often. But I’m always hoping for the best for him and we’re always messing with each other. I think of him as a brother.”
Idowu: “Even to this day, it’s still competing. The better he gets and the more things he gets down, it makes me think, ‘Yo, I have to be on my stuff today because EZ has made a couple plays.’ Having EZ and coming as far as we’ve come, honestly, we’re always competing. The better he gets, the better I need to get.”

The competition between Zeise and Idowu began two years ago, but the story has an earlier start date. It might have been 2011, when they were both sophomores; that was Zeise’s first year playing varsity. Or 2012 when Idowu got bumped up to the varsity squad. Or even earlier than that, maybe all the way back to 2008 when they were in seventh grade.

Back then, Zeise was a receiver - “Yeah, when he couldn’t catch,” Idowu says - and Idowu was a tight end.

Zeise: “I remember this game at Kiski.”
Idowu: “Yes!”
Zeise: “He forgot his spikes.”
Idowu: “I was playing with sneakers, man! It was muddy and slippery, it was raining.”
Zeise: “He was slipping all over.”
Idowu: “It was terrible. Did I drop that one pass at the end of the game?”
Zeise: “I just remember you slipping.”
Idowu: “I slid and tried. I think I caught it. But it was bad.”

Idowu was something of an unknown man at that point. He had moved to Pittsburgh prior to sixth grade and stayed in the North Allegheny school district for two years before his family moved back to New York for eighth and ninth grade.

Idowu doesn’t remember staying in touch with many of his friends or teammates from western Pa. during his two years away.

“I left and no one knew I left,” he says. “Then I came back and everyone was like, ‘Where have you been?’”

Two years can make a big difference for young men transitioning from middle school to high school - particularly young football players getting their first taste of weight training and strength work. So when Idowu rejoined some old teammates on North Allegheny’s high school squad, there was plenty of “sizing up” going on.

Zeise: “When he first came, I didn’t remember him being that big back in middle school. He came back and he looked like Megatron. I was like, ‘Whoa.’ But he was always athletic and that was the one thing that stood out: he was very athletic.”
Idowu: “Thanks, bro.”
Zeise: “Yep.”
Idowu: “He used to have an afro in seventh grade. I came back and he cut his hair. He was like a whole changed man. He still didn’t talk at all, but all of a sudden he could catch.”
Zeise: “My hands may have been a little better.”
Idowu: “I hadn’t seen him play a ton, but he was pretty built in seventh grade. He could always jump. He played basketball and soccer and I remember he was pretty big, he was a big dude. And when I came back, he was more built and had no hair. I was like, ‘Is that EZ? And he’s a receiver?’ He was pretty good. He was the guy.”

By that point, Zeise had established himself as a primary weapon in North Allegheny’s passing game. In his junior year, he caught 23 passes for 677 yards (29.4 yards per catch) and four touchdowns. The Tigers, with Zeise playing receiver and cornerback and Idowu lined up at linebacker and running back, went 16-0 that year and won the PIAA Class AAAA state championship.

Zeise followed that performance with 49 catches, 952 yards and 10 touchdowns in his senior season. He also had eight interceptions in his final two seasons, including one memorable pick against a notable future teammate.

Idowu: “Which game did you have two picks?”
Zeise: “It might have been a playoff game. I had one against Erie McDowell; I was covering James Conner on a wheel route or something.”
Idowu: “Yeah, JC!”

Pitt offered Zeise a scholarship in August prior to his junior season, and he had a number of other Power Five offers on the table 11 months later when he committed to the Panthers. Idowu, on the other hand, didn’t have many options. Bowling Green showed a lot of interest but never offered. Notre Dame College gave him a partial scholarship offer. And he had a brother at Albany who thought he could probably convince the coaching staff to at least let him join the team as a walk-on.

Then there was a friend who babysat for Joe Rudolph, Pitt’s offensive coordinator at the time. Idowu’s highlight tape found its way to Rudolph, who showed it to linebackers coach Chris Haering, and the Pitt staff decided that Idowu was worth a walk-on spot.

So, in the summer of 2014, Zeise and Idowu turned from high school teammates to college teammates and freshman roommates.

Zeise: “We associated with each other. It wasn’t anything crazy.”
Idowu: “He just never talked. At all. We called him ‘Ghost Town.’ That was his nickname.”
Zeise: “I remember that.”

Interviewer: I thought that was because you were a cornerback and no receivers could make plays there so it was a ghost town.

Zeise: “That’s how I like to spin it, but I’m not sure if there’s any -“
Idowu: “No truth to that.”
Zeise: “- not sure if there’s any reality to it.”

In the fall of 2014, the reality was that Zeise and Idowu were both redshirting - Zeise as a receiver, Idowu as a safety. In 2015, Zeise got on the field and caught five passes for 54 yards; Idowu also played, lining up on special teams for 10 games and, in the course of the season, transitioning from safety to linebacker.

That offseason, Zeise made a similar move: he went from receiver to linebacker.

“I was kind of confused when he moved, because he was a good receiver, a really good receiver,” Idowu says - a comment that Zeise acknowledges with a knowing laugh. “I think everyone was confused because it was like, ‘Yo, why isn’t he at receiver?’ Yeah, he’s big; we were in agreement that he was big, so he could play linebacker. But why not receiver? He’s good at receiver.

“The skills translated over, though; he can catch the ball and there aren’t many linebackers in the room that can really catch the ball.”

In the 2016 offseason, Zeise and Idowu found themselves in a new stage of their high school teammate-turned-college teammate relationship: they were competitors. Both were learning how to play linebacker in Pitt’s defense and they were both learning the same position.

The Pitt staff had pegged Zeise and Idowu for the ‘Star’ linebacker position, something of a hybrid safety/outside linebacker role that calls for a faster, more athletic player who can handle the run but also drop into coverage; with those as the requirements, the converted receiver and the converted safety both made sense for the ‘Star.’

On Monday before the 2016 season opener against Villanova, Zeise was listed as the starter, but at midweek, it looked like Idowu was winning the job. When Villanova took the field on offense for the first time, though, Zeise was on the field.

“Because we knew each other, it was definitely easier for us to push each other harder,” Zeise says. “And it was easier for us to help each other out, too. It made competing easier, I guess, but not easier in the sense of taking it easy on each other; just the process itself.”

Zeise’s role as the starting ‘Star’ lasted all of one quarter, though; he suffered an injury that ended his season in that first game, putting Idowu into the top spot for the final 12 games of the season. Going into 2017, Idowu was the returning starter but Zeise didn’t play the Wally Pipp role; instead, he moved to the other side of the formation and learned the ‘Money’ linebacker position. At a bulked-up 240 pounds, he was able to play in the box but also still run and cover, and while there was a learning curve in the first extended playing time of his career, Zeise improved from the start of the season to the end, and he finished with 49 tackles and 5.0 tackles for loss.

Meanwhile, Idowu, still starting in the ‘Star’ role, led Pitt in tackles (94), tackles for loss (11.5) and sacks (5.0).

“When I went out and he had to go in two years ago, with every game, he improved a lot,” Zeise says of Idowu. “And because of that, his knowledge of the defense is so immense; it’s so broad that I looked at him a lot of times when I wasn’t sure how to fit something a certain way or how to get moves and technique. We sit next to each other in the meeting room and he was always giving me tips and things like that. It was really helpful.”

“He improved a lot,” Idowu says of Zeise’s performance last season. “And you saw a change in personality as well. Like, when I first got to linebacker, I wasn’t as aggressive. EZ coming from receiver, there was like no aggression there. But as time went on - I think you smacked the Georgia Tech quarterback or somebody and that was one of the first times you really heard the hit. It was like, ‘What? Who hit him?’ Somebody said, ‘That was EZ’ and I was like, ‘What?’ I was so hyped.”

It wasn’t just the hits that other players and coaches took notice of; now, perhaps out of necessity, ‘Ghost Town’ has started to talk.

Zeise: “I’m at the point where I just have to; I get yelled at if I’m not -“
Idowu: “As far as now? Now, yeah, he has to talk.”
Zeise: “The first time I went out at linebacker, I wasn’t talking very much and they were letting me know. I think it was ‘Juan Price; it was when we were doing a walk-through before the first game and he was like, ‘If you don’t talk, I’m going to kick your [butt].”
Idowu: “He used to do that to me, too.”
Zeise: “He was like, ‘If you don’t give me the stretch call - ‘“
Idowu: “It was always a stretch call!”

Now Zeise and Idowu are entering their redshirt senior seasons as returning starters who figure to see the field early and often in 2018. The Pitt linebackers have depth and will likely rotate multiple players, at least at the outside positions, but Zeise and Idowu - as well as redshirt senior middle linebacker Quintin Wirginis - are expected to lead the defense on and off the field.

That’s quite a finish to a story that started nearly a dozen years ago.

“It’s wild how stuff ended up,” Idowu says. “Rooming together freshman year to being in the same room now and how we mess with each other now. It’s really fun. Our relationship has really grown. We might not have been the closest guys to begin with, but now we’re around each other every day, we see each other day. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to EZ as much - I don’t think he’s ever talked, period, as much as he talks now, and I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him as much as we’ve talked since being in college.”