Coach Carman Returns to....UCLA
Article By: Let's get in the way back machine, and go to the early 2000s. Conan O'Brien, nor anyone, had ever heard of a podcast. Conan was still doing his 'in the year 2000' future bit, even after the year 2000. And the Leon commercials were on TV.
Coach Carman signed up for this promising sounding league, and ended up with UCLA for season 1. Marcedes Lewis may have been on the team (he's now the 2nd oldest player in the NFL, to Aaron Rogers).
How he found out about the league, he doesn't remember. How he ended up being contacted by UCLA, he doesn't remember either.
Who he played in that first season? Thanks to the NDL History Vault, some memorable names come to mind.
Missouri 31 at UCLA 28 - Sunspotiens. Probably my best friend from the NDL. We later met up in real life in Atlanta at an Andretti Kart, and text each other here and there. We ended up being the NDL Rules Tzars at some point.
Ole Miss 27 at UCLA 34 - Polobert, an Indianapolis resident who now lives in Charlotte. His fellow Indianapolis resident and friend coming into the league was Kegr8er, who he is rumored to have had a flaming red ale love child with. Both were solidly in my top 5 friends in the NDL, and they were great to have fun banter with in the NDL. Shoot, the 3 guys above were all in the XSFL with me (an NDL spinoff league, with mid-major/bad P6 league with an NFL style schedule and playoffs).
Arizona State 13 at UCLA 7 - Matt90210, who must have really liked that TV show. Good thing I didn’t do that and go by Dexter305 (not that we knew who Dexter was in the early 00’s). Matt was around for all but a handful of the first 25 seasons, came back for 29...and is yet to be heard from for the reboot.
Oregon 14 at UCLA 19 - Krem, who went on to win the NDL Beefy Cup in Season 3, and the NDL National Championship in Season 4, both with Oklahoma.
UCLA 17 at SDSU 10 - StingU, who was around for the first 15 seasons, and the 25th season. While he had 2 winless seasons, he kept coming back (not that he kept the same team after the goose egg seasons).
Honorable mentions to - str8doyadirty: who had winning seasons each of his and the NDL’s first 5 seasons. Brian Green: who was around for the first 10 seasons, but sadly don’t remember much about him. The rest of the guys were only around for 1-3 seasons.
Coach Carman went 6-5 that first season, and 5-3 in the PAC 10 (RIP). He then went on to his alma mater, UCF the next season. Speculation about returning to UCF will always be a thing, just like Scott Frost returning to Nebraska (from UCF).
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