{"id":24164,"date":"2026-07-10T09:35:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T15:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=24164"},"modified":"2026-07-10T10:19:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:19:56","slug":"what-might-have-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/what-might-have-been\/","title":{"rendered":"What Might Have Been"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I was young, maybe 10 or so, I apparently became enamored with the UCLA Bruin cartoon mascot.\u00a0 I remember having the light blue t-shirt with the gold lettering and the cartoon bear, probably the only kid in suburban Chicago with such a shirt who had no connection to the school, and had determined that this is where I was going to go for college.\u00a0 What that actually meant, I’m sure I had no idea, but that was my goal.\u00a0 Unfortunately, my mom made sure to extinguish those dreams pretty quickly, letting me know in no uncertain terms that it was too far away and there was no way I would be going there.<\/p>\n

I mean, what was the harm in letting a young kid dream?\u00a0 Who even knew if it would have lasted or, if it did, if I would have even gotten in?\u00a0 Anyway, by the time I hit high school and it was time to start seriously thinking about where I was going to go to school, UCLA never even entered the picture.\u00a0 I visited four schools, applied to three, and ended up going to the only one outside the Illinois state borders: Purdue University.<\/p>\n

Those childhood dreams were a distant memory by the time I graduated and made my first ever trip to California in 1998.\u00a0 Still, the closest I came to Los Angeles was San Diego until 2014.\u00a0 I’ve made a number of return trips to LA since then and occasionally thought of maybe adding in a trip to Westwood to at least see the campus, but it never got past that point.\u00a0 It didn’t seem likely that I would ever see what I had missed out on, and that was ok.<\/p>\n

In 2022, however, things changed.\u00a0 In a surprise announcement, UCLA and USC were going to be joining the Big Ten, which opened up the possibility of heading west for a football or basketball game.\u00a0 While UCLA football plays at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, nearly 30 miles from campus, Pauley Pavilion was smack dab in the middle of the action.\u00a0 This past January, with realistic national title contention hopes still alive, Purdue basketball made their first trip to California for conference play.\u00a0 And I was joining them.<\/p>\n

After an early afternoon tour of Dodger Stadium on a Tuesday in late January, we headed west towards the UCLA campus.\u00a0 After finding an overpriced parking spot, we started walking towards the arena, which is on the campus, passing students, faculty, and buildings along the way.\u00a0 We were early, so we had the opportunity to just sit and take it all in for a bit, before getting in line for the game.\u00a0 Decked out in gold and black instead of blue and gold, I was finally in Westwood and\u00a010-year-old me was thrilled!\u00a0 Sadly, the Bruins outlasted the Boilermakers that night and their souvenir cup game was lacking, but I came home with a John Wooden bobblehead, a legend at both schools, and a 40-year-old itch finally scratched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was young, maybe 10 or so, I apparently became enamored with the UCLA Bruin cartoon mascot.\u00a0 I remember having the light blue t-shirt with the gold lettering and the cartoon bear, probably the only kid in suburban Chicago with such a shirt who had no connection to the school, and had determined that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568,3],"tags":[2698,289,4644,12704,3824,12332,4680,3317,6577],"class_list":["post-24164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball","category-turkeytalk","tag-big-ten","tag-boiler-up","tag-dodger-stadium","tag-john-wooden","tag-mom","tag-pauley-pavilion","tag-rose-bowl","tag-ucla","tag-usc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24529,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24164\/revisions\/24529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}