Cal Berkeley’s Calgorithm – social media and self-awareness in ‘the people’s program’
BERKELEY, Calif. – Dotted around the crowd of overjoyed fans packed into the epicenter of the Cal Berkeley campus Saturday morning were the ambassadors who played a specific role in making this once unimaginable scene a reality.
They raised their phones high and captured a 360-degree view of the madness of ESPN’s “College GameDay” and set a record. They embraced the emotion of the moment as the sun began to shine over the hills of Berkeley.
Without them, Nick Saban doesn’t rip off his crimson tie at the behest of the fans who can’t bear to see even a hint of anything approaching Stanford Cardinal Red in front of the sea of exuberant California blue and gold. Without them, program legend Marshawn Lynch won’t be flown in as a celebrity guest selector and take over his rightful place in a golf cart and later placing Kirk Herbstreit in a very friendly grip.
And without them, the seats at California Memorial Stadium won’t be full until twelve hours later to deal with a painful last-minute 39-38 loss to No. 8 Miami.
Consider the growing cultural influence of the Calgorithm, a guerrilla-style social media movement that leans toward sarcasm, stereotyping, and self-awareness through photoshopped and AI-generated memes that embrace the absurdity of perception.
Calgorithm was easy to spot in Berkeley on Saturday. (Christopher Kamrani / The Athletic)
On Saturday, as GameDay’s Pat McAfee continued to stir the crowd, it was clear that the Calgorithm had achieved its goal: proving that Cal, associated with one of the most liberal communities in America, does in fact have a beloved fan base that loves to obsess. with Golden Bear Football.
Enter the hashtag online and you’ll be flooded with memes of grizzly bears wearing masks and getting off a plane called “Stop Climate Change Airlines” in Florida prior to Cal’s game at Florida State earlier this season. Or grizzly bears welcoming the Miami Hurricanes on the asphalt with a book ‘Critical Race Theory’ in hand.
“There’s a certain joy and a certain absurdity,” says Nam Le, who graduated from Cal in 2012. “It’s a nice story of a fan base that has traditionally been ignored.”
Right now there are too many memes to count – and new attempts at their own self-mockery almost every minute.
From within, they have cultivated a deeply obscure sports moment that has resonated not only within the online reach of the Cal fanbase, but also among college football followers of other teams across the country. A routine response from a random follower after diving deep into the Calgorithm is that “Cal is now my second favorite team,” say members of the Calgorithm.
When it comes to actual membership, some of them are publicly known, some are not. Some are transparent about their real lives on social media, others are not.
Notable commodities include a teacher, data analyst, political coordinator and someone who hands out hot dogs at minor league baseball games. The others exist in the realm of anonymity and are called ‘the burners’. They are known among random social media handles for their participation in the online discourse that has given a disarming character to platforms that are often awash with volatility.
They have become visible online, but also within the walls of the Cal football center. Some members of Cal’s football support staff have carved out a group text thread specifically to share new memes.
“The burners are hilarious, man,” said Marshall Cherrington, Cal’s director of player personnel. “We love them all in this building.”
Linebacker Cade Uluave specifically thanked “the burners” during a press conference last week for helping to bring more attention to the program and the game against the Hurricanes. Special teams coordinator Vic So’oto shared on X that defensive lineman Xavier Carlton and linebacker Ryan McCullough “keeping the bag warm like Cal burners” followed by some flame emojis.
The reach that the Calgorithm has achieved over the course of the season applies to the school and location. At a university in a city long known for its involvement in social movements dating back to the 1960s, this movement just played out on social media.
And the people, the fans, took matters into their own hands. GameDay producer Matthew Garrett said before he called Cal last week to gauge interest in hosting, he was inundated with questions from fans about what they could do to get the show to Berkeley for the first time. Prior to Saturday, Cal was one of six Power 4 schools that had never hosted.
Of course, when it got the chance, it was in typical Calgorithm fun. The boards remained high compared to Cal’s list of Nobel laureates, compiled in Berkeley, compared to Miami. (The score is currently 61-4.) One read: “I thought this was a protest!”
The Calgorithm really seemed to take off after Cal upset Auburn 21-14 on September 7 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The meme by Don Grizzel, Ph.D (@golDonBear on X) equipped with recesses of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, whose parents met in Berkeley in the early 1960s, Oski, Cal’s bear mascot, quarterback Fernando Mendoza, a rainbow and a stupidly expansive photo of President Joe Biden and the caption read: “You just Lost to the Woke agenda.” The post has received 5 million impressions.
– Don Grizzell, Ph.D. (@golDonbear) September 7, 2024
The scope of the Calgorithm is immeasurable, its members say, a result of college football’s ever-churning conference realignment. When the previously established Pac-12 imploded, Cal, along with its rival Stanford, was forced to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, a league on the opposite coast but a home in a power conference. With that, Cal fans had a chance to introduce themselves to a part of the country that perhaps only knew Berkeley through several long-standing stereotypes.
“They already believe these stereotypes about us,” says burner Callie, also known as @WokeMobFootball. “Why don’t we just turn it up to 12 and just absolutely make fun of it because they sound so absurd when it’s thrown back at them?”
Mike Davie says Cal fans are armed for any kind of perception fans throw their way online. But they say they always try to do it with a smile, knowing that college football is what they all love and it doesn’t have to be another toxic online game.
“Yes, we’re telling them the ‘DEI’ defense is killing it here,” Davie said. “And when people say, ‘Don’t make fun of Cal fans. They control pronouns.” And we were like, “Here comes the pronoun dot team!” And it makes them laugh.”
The C algorithm is also constantly a step forward. They have that too helped raise money for Cal’s NIL collective, Cal Legends. People who donate leave comments thanking the Calgorithm for activating the attention.
“That’s the kind of person Cal produces in the real world, people who want to help do things in smart, simple and efficient ways,” Cherrington said. “And we want our doors to always be open to them. This is the people’s program.”
Four hours before kickoff against Miami, a Calgorithm tailgate could be found in a small parking lot on the southeast side of campus. Already exhausted from a day that started before sunrise, they shared highlights and beers. They were still happy with Lynch driving the golf cart. Together they watched as Vanderbilt upset No. 1 Alabama.
They introduced themselves to each other as their online handles. Some burners loved meeting others. One burner thanked Callie for remixing Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go!” hit for Cal running back Jaydn Ott. “Ott to go” was played on GameDay, which Callie couldn’t get over, and probably never will.
OTTTOGO
We have Jaydn Ott to go!#Calgorithm #FightForCalGameday #H1M #WhyNotCal pic.twitter.com/8D68f8pnjH— The liberal calgorithm (@wokemobfootball) September 28, 2024
Fellow Cal fans crowded around an exhausted Avinash Kunnath, a Cal graduate and one of the godfathers of the popular fan blog site Write for California. Kunnath wore a Calgorithm meme T-shirt, a denim jacket and a fuzzy bear hat. Saturday can’t happen without him, and indeed everyone else on that lot, they said.
The group handed out photos of Malört, a burner tailgate tradition dating back to the 2021 season. It was an ode to a past that was too often full of disappointment and that returned with a vengeance on Saturday evening. But it was also a tribute to a future that was so quickly reshaped by the community of devotees who took matters into their own hands and made the joke at their own expense before anyone else could.
“I like to tell people that we almost died as a program,” Le said. “We can no longer afford to be realistic about it. This program deserves it and can only survive with a love, an ambition and a spirit that is greater.”
(Top image: Meech Robinson / The Athletics; Bob Kupbens / Icon Sportswire)
