Two Questions: Answer Them To Share Your UCLA Story With Bruins Nation

Bumped. This has become another incredible thread which we will try to keep going through this weekend. GO BRUINS. -N

Heading into what is shaping up to be the most anticipated UCLA football season since 2001, I thought I try something out that will allow this community to become even together and get us to know each other even better.  Last time, we tried something like this it lead to an incredibly powerful thread. We have lot more friends who have become a part of this wonderful community since then. So I thought this is a good time to try this out again. I have two questions for all of you who consider themselves part of this community. Join me after the flip.

What is your connection to UCLA?

Are you an alum or a current student or are you just a UCLA fan?  How did you become part of the Bruin Family.  Also, if you are graduate of UCLA or a current student let us know your year of graduation or the expected year of graduation. If you are interested in hearing my story and read some of others you should read this post entitled "why we bleed blue and gold." And after reading that I’d like to hear from those who haven’t had the chance to share their story yet to do so in this thread.

How did you become a part of Bruins Nation?

Well, it’s not a secret to many folks here that I originally started blogging on FireKarlDorrel, which was a blog that was started by my colleague Odysseus. I started writing there at the time because I was frustrated that UCLA alums/fans, who had serious reservations and doubts about the previous regime, was getting shouted down in then dominant message boards. We wanted to find a place where we could discuss and write about UCLA football based on numbers and the performance we were seeing on the field. We especially locked into FKD after we saw UCLA fans celebrating a "moral victory" over U$C* in December of 2005, which we all found repulsive.

However, as we started writing on FKD, it became pretty clear to us that we liked blogging about all things UCLA. So, when couple of my friends – Markos (founder of DailyKos) and Jerome (founder of MyDD) – who started SBNation along with Tyler (founder of Athletics Nation), approached me about the possibility of starting a UCLA based blogging community in spring of 2005. I immediate jumped on and brought along Ajax and Odysseus with me. BN became the first non baseball blog to become part of SBN. Well it kind of all took of from there.

It's kind of funny. We have taken a lot of pot shots over the years about how BN was nothing more than just a single issue blog  (especially during the gloomy Dorrell years, as people were conveiniently overlooking how we were also blogging away about Ben Ball and anything else that had a UCLA angle which we were interested in). lol Anyway ...enough about those tough years.

So how about you. I am really curious to hear from everyone – whether you blog/comment here regularly or just lurk around here – how did you end up becoming a part of this community. What brought you over here? A google search, word from your friend, link from another site? I am very curious to hear about it. 

Consider this is a special open thread heading into this last weekend of 2009 football offseason

Fire away.

GO BRUINS.