So, after the school paper dropped their latest piece, just like Emily called it, no one really gave a damn. The reason? Simple. Most kids at Avalis couldn't care less about football. They barely even showed up for school events, so yeah, interest levels were pretty much in the basement.
And then there's Luke. Dude was just a benchwarmer. There were like thirty other guys riding the pine, all jostling for space. People only cared about the starters, the ones who could actually win games. A Chinese-American dude joining the bench? Big whoop. Subs rotated every week, and no one gave a crap.
For Luke's buddies, this was a life-changing moment; for everyone else, it was just another shuffle on the bench. Heck, even John and Derek didn't stir up much chatter.
But here's the kicker: three days after the school paper hit the stands, right before the new season kicked off, a bombshell dropped on the UCLA Bruins. Their star quarterback, Kevin Craft, got nailed by the cops for domestic violence.
Even in the big leagues, players getting into legal trouble is a huge deal, and the league might slap them with extra suspensions. The NCAA? They're even stricter. They care a lot about academics and moral character. So, if a player gets caught up in stuff like theft or DUI, they could be benched for the whole season.
This time, Kevin Craft was accused of repeatedly beating up his girlfriend. The cops gathered evidence, did their thing, and officially charged him.
After some back-and-forth, UCLA decided to temporarily suspend Kevin Craft, making him cooperate with the investigation.
This was a bombshell!
For the past five years, the UCLA Bruins had been clawing their way back to being competitive. Last year, they finally hit their stride, with Kevin Craft at the heart of it all. Now, before the new season even started, they lost their star player, leaving the team in chaos and the fans freaking out.
To make things worse, after losing their backup quarterback, they also lost their starter. Head coach Rick had no choice but to announce that Kevin Prince would be stepping up as the starting quarterback.
"Fourth year in college, only seventeen passes, no touchdowns." That was the new UCLA Bruins quarterback's resume. It was so pathetic it was almost funny, like a bad joke. The season hadn't even started, and it felt like they were already throwing in the towel.
Fans were losing their minds. Who the hell cared about the school paper's news? A benchwarmer, even if he was from Avalis, was just a blip on the radar. Jay's report didn't even get a chance to make waves before it got drowned out by this mess.
That was Luke's big debut in the newspaper.
After Kevin Craft got the boot, Darius moved up to second-string quarterback, and Luke slid into the third-string spot. But no one noticed. Without Kevin Craft, it was like the sky was falling. Neither Kevin Prince nor Darius Bell could save the Bruins, let alone Luke.
But for Luke, the school paper's news fizzling out was no biggie. It took him two years to go from a nobody to a practice player for a college team; one year to go from an unknown practice player to a benchwarmer for the Bruins; and just three days to jump from a small-time sub to the third-string quarterback.
That was already a crazy leap. He had big dreams but wasn't greedy. He was cool with where he was at. At least now he could start real quarterback training and, with some proper guidance, work his way up step by step.
Sure, a meteoric rise would be awesome, but grinding it out would give him more confidence. Luke knew his skills were trash, which made him even more pumped to train. Otherwise, even if he got a shot to play, he'd just choke on the field, let alone complete any game tasks.
The 2010 NCAA football season kicked off. On Saturday, September 11, UCLA hosted Stanford University, another Ivy League school. These two teams were like sworn enemies, often called the "National Derby"!
Stanford had been killing it the past two years, steamrolling everyone. Their junior quarterback, Andrew Luck, was a total beast. He took over as the starting quarterback in his freshman year and became the best offensive player in the Pac-12 for two years straight, almost untouchable in the league. This year, Andrew was a top pick for the All-American team and the Heisman Trophy, the biggest honor a college football player can get.
Compared to Stanford, UCLA's recent performance was a total dumpster fire. Still, the national derby between the two schools was always a nail-biter, and Bruins fans were crossing their fingers for a miracle upset.
But reality? It was a cold slap in the face.
Kevin Prince's first start was a disaster. Dude played like he was in a coma. No touchdowns, a pass completion rate under forty percent, and two interceptions. The team got their butts handed to them with a brutal "0:35" score, watching Stanford strut off the field.
The season had just kicked off, and it was already looking grim.
For Luke, though, it was his first time on the bench during a game, soaking in the crowd's energy and the electric atmosphere. The adrenaline rush and the heat of the moment were seared into his memory, fueling his drive to train even harder. He dreamed of the day he'd be out there, arms wide, basking in the glory and chaos at the heart of the action.
He was convinced that day wasn't too far off.
In the days that followed, Luke threw himself into training. Even Kevin stopped giving him grief because Kevin had his own problems on the field. He had to deal with the pressure from opponents, not the competition from Darius and Luke. To keep his starting spot and his career alive, he had to go all out.
After getting back from training camp, Luke knocked out another daily training task and earned a basic point. But then he noticed his daily training tasks had leveled up.
Now he had to complete twenty-five training items each day, up from twenty.
This included a ton of strength training like bench presses and squats. The system clearly thought Luke needed to toughen up. Even if he couldn't be a tank like the defensive players, he at least needed to stop getting knocked over so easily.
There was also a lot of technical training like passing and footwork. Mastering quarterback skills is a grind, no shortcuts. But along with the basic drills, new ones like five-yard passes, fifteen-yard passes, and target passing were added. This meant Luke was stepping up his game, becoming more professional.
The number of consecutive days required to complete the training tasks also doubled, now up to fourteen days.
This meant sticking it out for longer, tougher challenges, and fewer chances to rack up basic points. Any slip-up, even a tiny one, in those fourteen days could reset the whole task, making him start from scratch.
Now Luke got why the previous system hosts, all six of them, had flopped. Years of training with zero room for slacking off, one moment of rest, and bam, back to square one. Even though Luke was confident, as the system kept throwing more tasks at him, he started feeling the heat.
Resetting and starting over? Not an option for Luke right now.
He was already a senior. The rookie training camp in March 2011 and the draft at the end of April were his last shots. Miss those, and he'd have to go the free agent route. Standing out in that massive pool of players to make it to the pros would be a nightmare, like ten or a hundred times harder.
He needed to shine in games and level up his skills. Every single day counted!
From mid-September to early December, a solid sixteen weeks, Luke didn't miss a single day of training. He nailed every requirement of each training item in the system. If he couldn't finish it during regular practice, he'd put in extra hours until he did.
John and Logan became his go-to training buddies. Not just them, but Derek and Wade would sometimes join in, making the grind a bit more bearable. Because of Luke's relentless hustle, they even gave him a nickname, "Bloody Bambi."
The nickname came from a training session where Luke busted his nose and started bleeding. He didn't notice right away and kept going, getting blood all over—his jersey, pants, hands, face, and shoes. He looked like he just walked out of a horror movie.
So, "Bloody Bambi" stuck, and even the first-team starters started calling him that, half-jokingly.
Sixteen weeks of brutal training paid off big time for Luke. He finally nailed down his fundamentals, like his passing grip, drop-back steps, and snap stance. If he kept at it, these moves would become second nature, part of his game for life, assuming he had a career.
Plus, over those sixteen weeks, Luke racked up eight basic points. Add that to the one point he got the week after training camp, and he had nine basic points, which felt like having a secret weapon.