The Cal Golden Bears will be in the national spotlight Saturday as ESPN’s College GameDay will be broadcast live from Berkeley for the first time ever, but if you want to get your sign on TV, you better get there by 6 am.
The most popular college football show on television these days is ESPN’s College GameDay. The show is never broadcast from a TV studio, they broadcast from an outdoor venue at a different university every week, with students competing to get their hilarious and often profane signs broadcast briefly on TV. The Saturday pregame show has been on since 1987, and has never been broadcast from the campus of Cal-Berkeley in 37 years, because the Cal Bears have not had a terribly significant football program for decades.
But that 37-year College GameDay drought ends this weekend. NBC Bay Area reports that College GameDay is coming to Berkeley on Saturday, in advance of Cal’s first ever home game in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), against the No. 8-ranked Miami Hurricanes. Cal and Stanford, are of course, in their first season in the ACC since ditching the PAC-12.
They’re coming to our city for the first-time ever 👀🌁
— Cal Football (@CalFootball) September 29, 2024
College Gameday is Berkeley bound! 🐻#GoBears | #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/bugoM8yB2t
Now the bad news: This pregame show goes from 6 am - 9 am PT Saturday morning. So yes, you will have to be on the Berkeley campus by 6 am Saturday if you want any chance of getting your sign on television, or even see anything. BART says they will be running special early train service trains that will start arriving at the Downtown Berkeley station at 5 am.
WE WILL HAVE EARLY TRAINS TO BERKELEY FOR COLLEGE GAMEDAY!!!
— BART (@SFBART) October 1, 2024
The early morning limited service will arrive at Downtown Berkeley station by 5 am and pick up passengers from the following stations threaded below:
🧵⬇️🐻🏈🚆 https://t.co/Is8V9qqTYm pic.twitter.com/hGT46cxfya
Mind you, this is a game scheduled for 7:30 pm Saturday night. So yes, you will have to find a way to kill ten-and-a-half hours between College GameDay and the game itself.
O-T-T-T-O-G-O
— The Liberal Calgorithm (@wokemobfootball) September 28, 2024
We've got Jaydn Ott to go!#Calgorithm #FightForCalGameday #H1M #WhyNotCal pic.twitter.com/8D68f8pnjH
The rare opportunity to appear on College GameDay comes likely because of a meme-driven Cal fan movement that people have been referring to as “The Calgorithm,” that is, the repurposing of anti-woke, right-wing insults into satirical jokes for Cal fans promoting pride in their extreme left-wing reputation. We see this in the above video called “Ott to Go,” a tribute to Cal’s star running back Jaydyn Ott, of course a parody of Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go.”
Woke vs Coke… a tale of two cities. @CollegeGameDay #Calgorithm pic.twitter.com/wzMOKwssyk
— Girl Father (@TIMBO_SL1CE) September 29, 2024
And Cal fans are already billing this game as “Woke vs Coke,” referencing Berkeley’s wokeness, and… well, something for which Miami, Florida is known.
Touched down in Calahassee 📍 pic.twitter.com/e0vWxjNSW3
— OTT TO GO (@HaasOfOtt) September 19, 2024
As NBC Bay Area points out, the Cal Golden Bears have been in the featured College GameDay game before, but all of these were away games and not at Berkeley. The most recent was a 30-24 loss to Utah in October 2015.
Related: College Football Twitter Gets Introduced to the "Calgorithim" [SFist]
Image via ESPN