Why NC Central football is facing UCLA at the Rose Bowl: ‘It’s bigger than the game’
It started when Michigan backed out of a home-and-home with UCLA without much notice. The Bruins suddenly had two big holes on their schedule and very few options to fill them.
Martin Jarmond, the UCLA athletic director, reached into his own past for inspiration.
A Fayetteville native who played basketball at UNC Wilmington, Jarmond is a double HBCU legacy. His late mother (and grandmother) went to N.C. Central. His father, who now lives in Raleigh, went to North Carolina A&T. Jarmond, who had previously been the athletic director at Boston College, was experiencing the West Coast lifestyle for the first time in his life. Why not offer a taste of that to others who were once like himself?
Thursday, NCCU will board a cross-country charter flight to play UCLA in the Rose Bowl on Saturday at Jarmond’s invitation, something very far from the typical guarantee game. N.C. Central is the second HBCU hosted by UCLA in as many years, and UCLA is paying for the NCCU Sound Machine band to travel and perform as well.
“After my mom passed away in July of 2020, I just thought, I want to find a competitive program, but I also want it to be a cultural experience for our student-athletes, our fans, our band, and provide that for another school and another team,” Jarmond said. “The icing on the cake was my mom and her influence. I was familiar with NCCU. I knew the AD at the time. That was the catalyst. All those things came together.”
NC Central not conceding
Alabama State went last fall. The Hornets’ band performed at halftime of a 45-7 UCLA win and got a standing ovation from the Rose Bowl crowd. Saturday, it’s N.C. Central’s turn to go Hollywood. But the Eagles aren’t going just for the applause.
“We’re not going out there just to go on vacation and be excited about the opportunity to play in the Rose Bowl,” NCCU coach Trei Oliver said. “We’re going out there to try and beat these people. Now, we know the task at hand. We know we’re going to have to play pretty much a perfect game. Chip Kelly, obviously a great offensive mind. But we’re not conceding and saying, ‘We’ll have fun in LA or Pasadena.’”
They are, however, making the most of the trip. The football charter alone has more than 150 people on it, and that doesn’t count the band and cheerleaders traveling on their own plane. A group of communications students will go along for a series of studio tours and four busloads of N.C. Central alumni will attend the game in Pasadena, making it the trip of a lifetime regardless of what happens on the field.
“It’s bigger than the game,” Jarmond said. “It’s that experience. And we’ll give our fans an experience they don’t usually have as well.”
Rose Bowl experience ‘could be historic’
UCLA has scheduled several events around the game, from a tailgate meet-up of members of the Black Student Union at both schools to honoring UCLA’s Black faculty. There’s also, somewhere in the middle, a football game, and the Eagles won’t be taken lightly.
After all, they’re the last team to beat Deion and Shedur Sanders and Travis Hunter — in last December’s Celebration Bowl, when all three were at Jackson State before opening 2-0 at Colorado this fall — and they’ve got some NFL prospects of their own, with Jarmond mentioning quarterback Davius Richard and running back Latrell Collier by name.
“We just want to show everybody the stuff we’ve been building and working on here for the past few years, since I’ve been here,” said defensive tackle Jaden Taylor, a redshirt junior who went to Northern Durham. “So we just really want to go out and showcase it. It’s going to be really exciting.”
Adrian Olivo, the Eagles’ two-time all-MEAC kicker, has watched so many games at the Rose Bowl on television, both football and soccer, that he’s still coming to terms with the idea of playing on the field where Gold Cups and World Cups have been decided. But a team that’s built its entire season on exceeding the very high expectations people have for it isn’t backing down now.
“You’re going to have the chills a little bit, because you watch that stadium on TV, that’s where national championships have been played,” Olivo said. “It’s a big stadium and a lot of historic things go behind that stadium. And it could be very historic for us on Saturday.”
It’s a business, but it’s personal
In the end, it’s still business. It’s still a guarantee game, a lower-level opponent coming for the kind of payday that helps keep a smaller athletic department running, even if this one has a little more pomp and circumstance attached. (North Carolina did a similar thing with Florida A&M in last season’s Week 0 opener, including a joint halftime performance with both bands.)
But it’s also very personal.
“My mom meant everything to me,” Jarmond said. “My mom was my rock. She was everything to me. I know she’s going to be looking down smiling at us playing her Eagles. I thought about that during my run this morning, how happy she would have been to be here.”
His father, the Aggie grad, will be there in person, wearing the same colors he’d wear to root against the Eagles to root for his son’s Bruins. His loyalties will not be divided.
“My dad, it’s easy,” Jarmond said. “My dad will be in blue and gold.”
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