So it’s your senior year, and you’ve been projected
to start at weak side linebacker for the UCLA football team. But
instead you are in Pocatello, Idaho ““ and even that move
isn’t permanent.
Welcome to Audie Attar’s strange year.
Attar was dismissed from the team last June by then-head coach
Bob Toledo for violating team rules.
“It was tough because we all came along and bonded
together ““ it was just like losing a brother,” senior
receiver Tab Perry said. “We lost him over a situation that
wasn’t even football-related, and we felt like he
wasn’t treated well.”
In order to play football, Attar transferred to I-AA school
Idaho State, where he would not have to sit out a year. Attar made
the Big Sky All-Conference team and helped lead Idaho State to an
8-3 record. Then, after Toledo was fired, Attar began talking with
members of the UCLA football team’s coaching staff, and
eventually ““ with the help of Assistant Athletic Director Bob
Field ““ was readmitted to UCLA and given back his
scholarship.
Despite all the trials and tribulations, the Claremont native
and Baghdad-born Attar faced, he is able to take something positive
out of the experience.
“I definitely did learn from the situation,” he
said. “What athletes do is monitored off the field, and it
made me grow up really quickly and put me in that responsible role,
after I didn’t react in a responsible way. It made me more of
a man. Coming from Los Angeles and going to a town of 50,000
people, which is less than what I used to play in front of, it made
me realize that much more that I was a Bruin.”
Attar was cut from the UCLA team after getting into a bar fight
with Steven McEwan, the brother of former UCLA backup quarterback
Scott McEwan. Attar had been suspended for the first game of the
1999 season for fighting with a former UCLA baseball player the
prior spring.
Attar had to make several adjustments to life and football at
Idaho State. Rather than fly on a chartered jet to a game like he
did at UCLA, Attar dealt with six-hour chartered bus rides.
“You make the best out of any situation,” Attar
said. “The lifestyle there is different, and I adapted to my
environment. If you take a step back from hype of playing in a
big-city environment, football is football. Playing in a place like
Idaho makes you realize you love the game.”
After Idaho State’s football season ended, he immediately
began to think about coming back to UCLA.
“I figured with the coaching change … I thought it would
be worth the shot to try to come back,” Attar said. “I
kept in touch with assistant coaches, and they said they supported
me 100 percent. I asked Bob Field, and I told him what I wanted to
do … he was really good to me.”
“I think that Audie regrets his actions,” said
Field, a former assistant football coach who coached Attar.
“I think when everyone looks back on their life, they regret
some of their actions, and I think Audie would say this is one of
those events. I think that coming back here and getting his degree
will be the end of the process, and he will end his time here on
the right note.”
Attar will be walking at graduation next week and will finish up
classes this summer for his sociology degree. Audie is considering
playing professional football in Canada and will evaluate his
options after he completes his coursework.
He endorses new football coach Karl Dorrell, praising him for
being a “real Bruin.”
Being from Iraq, Attar reflects on more than just football.
“I’m glad the war (in Iraq) is over,” Attar
said. “I’m also glad Saddam is gone for the sake of
Iraqi people. I have family back there. I’m not thinking
about the war. I’m excited about the future of Iraq,”
Attar said.
Then he added one more thing: “I’m not a
pessimist.”