Chip and old block: Jon Karacozoff '09, defensive end, followed his dad, Kirk '80, defensive end, into Cal football.

Sports at Berkeley is as old as the school itself—it began in 1868 with the men's crew team, followed in 1882 by men's rugby. Browse through images of Cal sports and you'll find all the lovely and endearing artifacts—the male students of 1879 exercising in the newly opened Harmon Gymnasium (the women were allowed to use the gym five hours a week.)

Once Berkeley had a gym it dawned on the Regents that a sports program, or some sort of athletic activity, was a worthy goal, that health and fitness might well be a boon for the budding late-19th-century student. And so they created the Department of Physical Culture.

Over the years, sports became an integral part of campus life, quickly expanding from early successes—the rubgy and crew teams won consistently, and in 1924 Helen Wills took the gold in tennis singles at the Olympics. New sports were constantly added to the mix. By the 1930s, Cal students could try their hand at anything from basketball and badminton to squash, soccer, and social dancing.

By the 1940s and 1950s football reigned supreme. The city of Berkeley had annual parades in which the players rode majestically up Shattuck Avenue in convertibles loaned by football fans and, of course, auto dealers eager for advertising opportunities. "The atmosphere about sports was different than it is now," says Ray Colvig '58, a student back then and a longtime Berkeley spokesperson who retired in 1991. "Students generally liked to be part of the sports scene." The main rooting section, in the middle of the stadium, was filled by male football fans. The women, except for a few designated cheerleaders, were shunted to the side. In this chaos, Colvig recalls, Life magazine arrived and managed to photograph, "3,000 boys getting up and shouting and raising their middle fingers. It was a full-page picture in Life. Every middle finger except a few that they missed was airbrushed out."

Come the 1960s, and Berkeley became synonymous around the world with "student demonstrations," and specifically with the Free Speech Movement. The FSM didn't have training tables—it had leaflet tables—and its presence, and eventual dominance in the headlines, created an "odd separation," as Colvig calls it. "You could have all this going on and up a couple of blocks you'd have a football game with little or no connection [to the demonstrations]."

Ironically, those protests and the collateral civil rights and equal rights movements playing out across the nation led to the biggest revolution in Cal sports. In 1972, a new federal law, known best by its austere name, Title IX, was enacted. Simply put, it prohibited discrimination—including financial discrimination—on the part of any school, college, or university receiving federal funds.

In 2008, we see much of Cal sports through the prism of star athletes, seven-figure coaches' salaries, big corporate sponsorships, and nationally televised games, all of which have made Cal sports something of a high-stress cauldron for students, staff, and coaches.

"There are definitely more pressures on students," says Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour, "especially when it comes to a place like Cal, with its high academic expectations and expectations of community service." Time demands on student athletes are huge. And they must perform at a high level, both because of the big money that permeates college athletics and because athletes are on championship teams.

"There's pressure for [participation in] the Olympics or the NBA or the WNBA," Barbour says, referring to the two big national basketball organizations. And there's pressure for Cal sports—like collegiate athletics programs throughout the nation—to get on television because such exposure helps pay the bills. Of the approximately $55 million annual Cal sports budget, a substantial amount comes from TV contracts, the rest from gate revenue, donations, sponsorships, and the Chancellor's discretionary fund. "You don't get on TV unless you're good," Barbour says, "and if you don't get on TV, you don't reap as much of that revenue."

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