UCLA Football: Carson Steele's Unique Bond with His Pet Alligator, Crocky-J

You read that right.

UCLA Bruins junior running back Carson Steele, a transfer out of Ball State, might be the club's pound-for-pound strongest player, but he's not even the most intimidating member of his own household.

That'd be Crocky-J, Steel's five-and-a-half-foot-long, 80-90 pound pet alligator who's been with him for 10 years, according to Ben Bolch of The Los Angeles Times.

“He kind of represents me, especially a kid from the Midwest coming to L.A. with blond hair, doesn’t look like he should be from Indiana, you know?” Steele said. “Might as well throw in an alligator.”

“I don’t even know if my mom and dad know this one,” Steele said with a laugh, “but when I was younger, I was trying to show him to my friends and something happened, one of my friends moved or something and I turned and looked the other way and he got me a little bit. That was the one time.”

Steele was considering bringing Crocky-J into his UCLA dorm, but logistics ultimately doomed that choice.

“Man, I wanted to so badly,” Steele noted, “but with the rules and stuff, I don’t think you can have those kinds of animals here. Indiana? It’s a little different.”

That said, maybe it's for the best that these days, the critter lives with Steele's parents in Indiana. And according to Bolch, it takes two humans to handle him.

Steele himself has had some run-ins with Crocky-J himself, as he told Tracy McDannald of Bruin Blitz:

Carson Steele set the record straight on some stories a #UCLA teammate passed on earlier in camp about his pet alligator and some past incidents. Still seems pretty dangerous to me 😂 pic.twitter.com/My3EbV6qDn

— Tracy McDannald 📎 (@Tracy_McDannald) August 13, 2023

"I have a few scars here and there on my hands," Steele allowed. "Had a few incidents [with Crocky-J], nothing crazy."