American Football: King of the Bay Area

John and Lu Ke were both members of the practice squad, and Lu Ke’s skill level was even worse. For the first two years, he couldn’t even make the practice squad. It was only in his third year, out of Anthony’s pity and sympathy, that he was finally allowed to join the team. Therefore, John naturally assumed that beating Lu Ke would be a piece of cake—a given, in fact.

But once the shuttle runs began, John discovered that Lu Ke was keeping pace with him stride for stride. This ignited John’s competitive spirit. He had already fallen from the starting lineup to the practice squad, a fall from heaven to hell. Was he really going to sink even lower? So, John gritted his teeth and unleashed his full strength, one hundred percent, holding nothing back.

Full-out sprint, sudden stop, turn, accelerate, dash, another sudden stop, turn.

When the shuttle run was over, John had only managed to finish first by a single body length. He had pushed himself so hard on the final sprint that he couldn’t brake in time, sliding forward and tumbling onto the grass. But John didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, he burst out laughing, letting out all his pent-up emotions in one cathartic release.

Lu Ke slowed his pace, bracing his hands on his knees. He couldn’t help but start laughing too. ”How about it? Feels good, right?”

”Yeah... yeah...” John said, gasping for breath. But after he spoke, a wry smile spread across his face again. ”Actually, I shouldn’t feel good. I almost lost. This isn’t the standard a proper Wide Receiver should have.” A wide receiver losing a forty-yard shuttle run to a quarterback? That was just too embarrassing. What’s more, Lu Ke wasn’t even a real quarterback; he was just a practice player with no official position.

”Look at it another way. I’ve been training for a year to reach this level, isn’t that a positive thing? And after pushing yourself to the limit, you were also able to show a different level of strength. So, if you keep training, doesn’t that mean you could get back on the main roster, even if it’s just as a third-string backup?”

Lu Ke’s words silenced John. The smile lingered on his lips, but his chest was still heaving violently. ’How did I end up like this? Was it really because my talent vanished? Or because I stopped trying? Or was it the intense competition, my father’s reputation... Did it all put too much pressure on me, causing me to give up on myself? So what exactly am I even holding on for now?’

”I’ve got two more sets of shuttle runs to do. How about it, want to join?” Lu Ke extended his right hand. ”I bet my stamina is better than yours, so I can beat you this time.”

”Bullshit.” John shot back without any hesitation, grabbing Lu Ke’s hand and using it to pull himself up. ”That was just a warm-up for me. Now that I’m warmed up, I can leave you in the dust, easy. If you’re not afraid of being embarrassed, then I’ll let you lose one more time.”

From that day on, John became Lu Ke’s regular training partner. In addition to ball drills and partner drills, John completed basic exercises like pull-ups, weighted squats, and sit-ups with Lu Ke, as well as a 10,000-meter long-distance run. Three days passed in the blink of an eye, and Lu Ke completed his second daily training mission without a hitch, earning another base point.

Lu Ke hadn’t spent the point he’d earned from the first daily training mission, so now he had two.

At first, Lu Ke had hoped to shore up some of his other weaknesses, but he soon realized that as a quarterback, he had far too many, and all of them were at a failing level. Two base points were just a drop in the bucket; he couldn’t get fat off one bite. So, he decided to just put both points into his Long Pass Accuracy, bringing that stat up to eighty-one.

Finally, among all of Lu Ke’s quarterback skills, one had broken the eighty-point threshold, moving from ”mediocre” to ”good.” Although it was still a long way from the ”excellent” ninety-point mark, it was a good start.

After he completed the second daily training mission, the third one appeared immediately. This time, not only had the number of training items increased significantly to a total of fifteen, but the required number of consecutive training days also went from three to seven. This left Lu Ke speechless. ”It’s only the third mission, and it’s already seven consecutive days. In the future, if I want to earn a base point, will I have to train for a whole year just to get one?”

Initially, Lu Ke thought earning base points wouldn’t be difficult—all he had to do was train consistently every day. But now, it seemed that was unrealistic. The true purpose of the daily training was to hone his fundamentals, which required years of persistent effort. It was obviously impossible to become a football superstar just by doing these basic drills that involved no technical skill or live-game practice.

The daily training missions weren’t a shortcut, but a foundation. This meant that if he wanted to grow quickly using base points, he could only pin his hopes on match missions and special missions.

However, ever since he got the system, no other types of missions had appeared, nor had he found a way to trigger them. Every time he asked Qi, the answer was the same: ”Access temporarily denied.”

So, Lu Ke temporarily set aside the other missions and focused on the daily training with his feet on the ground. Every day was grueling, but also fulfilling. More than the base points, he could feel himself improving with every session—real, tangible progress. The entire framework, method, rhythm, and measure of his training became clearer, and his once-distant dream grew more concrete bit by bit. The feeling was so wonderful that he couldn’t help but immerse himself in it. Training gradually became a form of enjoyment, and every day he couldn’t wait to dive back in.

DING, a sound echoed in his mind again. Lu Ke knew he had completed the seven-day daily training mission and earned another base point. Then, a new mission appeared.

He didn’t rush to allocate the point, but instead opened the mission: twenty basic training exercises, to be completed for seven consecutive days. The difficulty hadn’t doubled to ten or fourteen days as Lu Ke had expected. It was still a seven-day cycle, which was a pleasant surprise. ”Could it be because my fundamentals are so terrible, so utterly pathetic, that the system can’t bear to see me continue being such a loser? Is that it, Qi?”

He didn’t get an answer from Qi, but he did hear John’s half-joking voice. ”What’s with the big smile? Did you get hit in the head with a football just now? Your sanity run off?”

Lu Ke shot John a speechless glance. ”I was just thinking about your sister.” It was a comeback that only guys would understand. When the others nearby heard it, they immediately started jeering and hooting. John opened his mouth to reply, but found their voices were too loud for him to get a word in. In the end, he could only shake his head helplessly and laugh in exasperation.

”Hurry up, hurry up, everyone pick up the pace!” Anthony’s voice boomed through a megaphone. ”We’re not here on vacation! This is training camp, training camp! The NCAA season is only five days away! Everyone gather up, now!” Amid the shouting, everyone stopped their idle chatter and started moving faster.

The NCAA, or National Collegiate Athletic Association, is an association of over a thousand four-year universities in the United States and Canada. Its primary activity is organizing various sports leagues. For college students, NCAA games serve as the best platform to showcase their skills before entering a Professional Alliance. Scouts are scattered in every corner, watching NCAA conference games to select the professional players their teams need.

The NCAA is one of the most important events for American university students outside of their academics, with an influence so great it even surpasses the professional soccer leagues, which are less popular in the United States. Major television networks broadcast NCAA games live. NCAA sports are divided into three divisions and dozens of conferences, featuring competitions in football, baseball, ice hockey, and basketball, as well as track and field, gymnastics, wrestling, and many others.

In NCAA football, there are six top-tier Division I conferences, and UCLA is a member of one of them: the Pac-12 Conference.

As the name implies, this conference has twelve teams. Over four months, they will play twelve games to determine their final rankings and compete for the conference’s ultimate championship: the Rose Bowl.

This year’s Pac-12 Conference season officially kicked off last week with the opening game between the University of Southern California and the University of Hawaii, with USC taking the win. This week, the games are about to begin in full swing, and in its first battle, UCLA will face Stanford University.

The first game of the season is always the most important, especially when the opponent is the team’s arch-rival. Just like in soccer, the most thrilling matches are always the derbies. The same is true in the NCAA. UCLA’s biggest rival is Stanford University, while their crosstown rival is the University of Southern California. They are mortal enemies who want to tear each other apart, and every game is explosive.

This year was, of course, no exception.

To focus their minds and go all out for the game, the team, led by their coaches, left the noisy campus environment and went to a training camp in the suburbs. The goal was to eliminate as many potential distractions as possible and devote themselves completely to the final preparations. After three days of training, the new season would officially begin.

John and Lu Ke tossed the footballs they were holding back into the cart. John asked in a low voice, ”You think we have a chance to make the roster?” The ”roster” he referred to included the third-string backups. But as long as you made the list, you had a chance.

”The roster? Ha, you’ve got to pick a better time to daydream.” Kevin Price walked over and tossed his football into the cart like he was shooting a basketball. He missed, and it fell to the side, but he didn’t even glance at it, just turned and walked away.

John didn’t let it slide, retorting, ”What’s really pathetic is someone who doesn’t even have a dream.”