Happy Birthday, The Mighty Bruin!

The Mighty Bruin turns one year old today. How did you like last night's party?

Kenneth Nwuba knows that it’s all about the Four Letters. (Photo Credit: Trevor Brown Jr./NCAA Photos via Getty Images via uclabruins.com)

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Unless you were living under a rock last night, you already know how amazing last night’s victory over Michigan was. Would you believe that your friends here at The Mighty Bruin planned it that way to celebrate the site’s first birthday?

Yeah, I wouldn’t either.

But, it was a heck of a way to mark the final day of the site’s first year of existence. And what a year it was!

For that matter, it’s been a strange 18-month journey that we’ve been on. It began back in October 2019 soon after AB5 was signed into law and we started asking questions about how the new law would affect BN. Two months later, we finally got the answer about ten days before Christmas. All of our contracts would be terminated effective March 31, 2020 and we would be limited to 26 articles each from January until the end of March due to the arbitrary rules created by the law.

As a result, it felt like a vacation, at least for me, as my writing frequency in our final three months with BN was scaled back to an article or two each week intending to reservce as many articles as possible for March due to the Pac-12 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments, plus spring sports and spring football. Well, those plans went out the window when the COVID-19 pandemic shut all sports down.

A few weeks later on March 31 on our final day at BN, we actually launched TheMightyBruin.com.

With no sports going on until an abbreviated football season finally launched in the fall, the first six months of the new site’s existence was…well…quiet. In a way, the shortened Pac-12 football season really served as a warm-up for our team. We were able to slowly get back into a rhythm while only having to worry about one sport.

Then, came the start of the basketball season. After what proved to be the longest layoff the team has seen since each of us signed on to start writing about UCLA, it was challenging to get back into a regular writing schedule.

When January came along, the flood gates kind of opened for us as all the sports which had been postponed from the Fall started to get played along with the winter sports. Spring games soon joined them and the past two months have been two of the craziest months we’ve ever had due to the sheer number of games and sports being played.

It’s been challenging trying to cover everything as broadly as we used to. So, I’d be lying if I said I’m not looking forward to a more normal schedule next school year.

The last month may have also been one of the most rewarding months since taking over BN six and a half years ago. It’s seen UCLA win the school’s 119th NCAA title in men’s water polo and the men’s basketball team make an improbable run at number 120.

Reading through the comments last night, I’m happy to report that our core community of UCLA fans seems to have made its way here. Hundreds of comments in our men’s basketball game threads prove that.

While we may have left a few folks behind, I’m also certain that we’ve added some new friends as well. We will continue to provide one of the most robust UCLA fan experiences you will find.

On behalf of our entire team, I want to personally thank everyone who has chosen to subscribe. Many of you showed us a level of faith by subscribing to a sports site when there were no actual sports going on. For that, we are grateful.

Thanks for joining us on this ride so far, but we’re really still just getting started. Stick around and invite your friends.

We’re really still just getting started.


Go Bruins!!! Beat the Zags!!!

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