The Calgorithm

It started as so many things do, on social media. 

Actually, it started more than a decade ago with a blog and band of irrationally devoted Cal football fans. And we’ll get to that story. But for now, let’s start with the X post.

On September 7, 2024, as the Cal football team closed in on an upset victory over Auburn, Berkeley graduate student Miles Goodman created a digital collage featuring images of Cal players, a rainbow, Kamala Harris, a strangely elongated Joe Biden, and an electoral map covered in blue. Two minutes after Auburn officials posted the score on X (21–14, Cal), Goodman shot back with his artwork and a message: “You just lost to the woke agenda.”

More than 5 million views later, it seems safe to say that he was onto something. 

Almost too quickly to believe, Cal’s fan base began dominating college football’s meme war. It did this by embracing Berkeley’s liberal tropes, especially in games against red-state schools. Auburn’s stadium was declared property of Antifa, their War Eagle battle cry altered to DEI Eagle. Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium became Woke Campbell Stadium, replete with pride flags. One image featured jersey-clad bears decamping the team plane with three-packs of Critical Race Theory textbooks. Miami was greeted with Woke vs. Coke and Commies vs. Convicts themes. Wake Forest became Woke Forest. This was fertile ground. 

“The community was making fun of all the stereotypes of being a Cal fan: land acknowledgments, pronouns in bathrooms, socialist revolutions, all that stuff,” said Avinash Kunnath, a 2010 grad who began covering Cal football as a blogger in 2007, and who currently runs the website Write for California (a play on the song “Fight for California”). 

In football, the phrase “breaking contain” refers to a play in which the running back is too fast or cagey to be corralled toward the middle of the field. The saying is also used by the Very Online to describe a post that garners attention beyond the community in which it was created. 

With the meme blitz, Cal Twitter broke contain, and gained its own moniker: The Calgorithm. And the Calgorithm would not be denied. 

“I saw it as an opportunity to form our own relationship with the woke label. I did not expect it to blow up the way it did, but here we are.”

The Calgorithm is powered by a disparate band of creators, known in the parlance as “burners,” many of whom date their fandom to the Tedford Era. (Jeff Tedford, Cal’s winningest football coach, helmed the team from 2002 to 2012.) Tedford was fired following a three-year stretch during which the team went 15–22, which was followed by an even more dismal 1–11 campaign under coach Sonny Dykes. At that point the program was in disarray, short on institutional support, and soundly outclassed by its opposition. The resulting malaise is where the spirit of this particular zeitgeist was born. 

It began, more or less, with the website California Golden Blogs, a fan-sourced project that eventually joined SB Nation (now part of Vox Media) in 2008. It was in the site’s comments section that Cal’s most creative fans came together, honing a particular brand of humor. In the words of Kunnath, who managed California Golden Blogs in the 2010s, “Berkeley doesn’t just embrace the weird, it encouraged, nurtured, and exported it, and our people showcased it every day.”  

California Golden Blogs and its successor, Write for California, were effectively Cal Twitter before Twitter was even a thing. The fans who showed up were rabid, but their reach was limited. That all changed with Goodman’s woke-agenda meme. 

“Now people have a wider taste of the way that we have always conducted ourselves,” said Nam Le, a 2013 Cal grad and longtime contributor to the Cal Twitter community. “We have always been funny, irreverent, and liberal-minded. And then we tapped into some energy that allowed us national exposure.”

The vein Goodman struck—Berkeleyites leveraging their own clichés as a core component of trash talk—held unexpected appeal. It worked because Cal was the butt of its own joke. Even opponents couldn’t help but laugh along.  

“I saw it as an opportunity to form our own relationship with the woke label,” said Goodman. “I did not expect it to blow up the way it did, but here we are.”

Also essential to its success was Cal’s addition to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) prior to the 2024 football season, after the Pac-12 imploded. The move exposed Cal to a host of campuses, primarily from Southern states, that were unfamiliar with its particular brand of fandom, and all too familiar with its radical reputation. 

“One of my goals in all of this was to show the other [ACC] institutions, ‘Hey, we’re fun, we bring something special to the table that you guys want to have.’”

In advance of Cal’s appearance at Auburn, an associate athletic director with the Tigers posted a caution to Berkeley fans. “No military flyover has taken place at a Cal game since the ’50s,” he wrote. “Those who do stand for the National Anthem may need something to calm them down.”      

Of course, Cal had hosted pregame flyovers, as recently as the previous season. Backlash was severe. “Banter is fun,” wrote the Calgorithm stalwart who goes by Admiral Bear. “Blatantly making up lies and passing them off as facts to suggest that others are less American than you is not fun. Auburn, I’ll be at your beautiful stadium tomorrow with my U.S. Marine veteran father. He doesn’t appreciate lies about our military. Neither do I.”    

The official apologized, then deleted his X account.     

If Admiral Bear’s response seems measured for a college student, that’s because he isn’t. The Calgorithm includes students, sure, but it is widely populated by alums whose ranks include lawyers, teachers, tech workers, and at least one California political staffer. Many, including Admiral Bear, maintain anonymity to hedge against racy memes coming back to bite them professionally and, in the age of doxxing, personally. (To be fair, about the raciest Cal Twitter gets is a handle bastardizing the spelling of current head coach Justin Wilcox’s last name to … well, you get the idea.)  

Most Calgorithm memes are more playful than combative—and intentionally so. 

“One of my goals in all of this was to show the other [ACC] institutions, ‘Hey, we’re fun, we bring something special to the table that you guys want to have,’” said Admiral Bear. “I got a number of people direct messaging me, saying, ‘I was really skeptical at first of having Cal in the ACC, but man, I’m sure glad you guys joined. Now I’m planning a trip out to Berkeley when we play you, and this is going to be a lot of fun.’ That’s really gratifying, and, I think, necessary for the survival of our athletic program.”

The Calgorithm’s real breakthrough came courtesy of ESPN. The network hosts the country’s most prominent NCAA football pregame show, College GameDay, which has been visiting campuses for marquee matchups since 1993. As of this October, Ohio State had hosted the show 26 times, Alabama 20 times, and Michigan 15 times. Prior to last year, only seven Power Four campuses had been ignored entirely. Cal was one of them. 

Up to that point, of course, Cal didn’t have the Calgorithm at its back. Not at first, anyway. But by the time a handful of burners released “Ott to Go”—a parody song and its accompanying video trumpeting Golden Bears running back Jaydn Ott, to the tune of Chappell Roan’s hit “HOT TO GO!”—momentum was swinging Cal’s way. There may be no straight-line connection between the Calgorithm and ESPN’s arrival in Berkeley, but there is a metric ton of correlative evidence.

Before that evidence is presented, it should be acknowledged that a lot had to go right to even lay the groundwork. First, Cal had to be good. Their 3–0 record to start the season checked that box. They had to have an appealing upcoming matchup at home. Miami, an ACC opponent, was scheduled to play at Memorial Stadium the following month, on October 5. The Hurricanes, a perennial powerhouse, were also undefeated, and boasted a Heisman-hopeful quarterback. 

To maintain appeal, of course, both Cal and Miami had to keep winning in the weeks ahead. Cal didn’t, losing on September 21 to Florida State. Fortunately, a week later, Miami overcame a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to pull out a last-minute victory over Virginia Tech, just as Washington, another GameDay contender, was losing to Rutgers. With that, Cal burners really turned it on, tagging every ESPN social media account they could find, from on-air talent to behind-the-scenes producers. The hashtag #FightForCalGameday started to trend.

Then there was “Ott to Go.” It was put together by burners Admiral Bear, nyt_wordle_bot, Draculaic, atomsareenough, and TwistNHook, who found the vocalist online, in Sweden of all places. (Her fee was a few hundred bucks. Atlantic Records this ain’t.) “‘Ott to Go’ is Cal fans at their best, creating things in service of a broader mission to support and love their football team,” said Kunnath. 

The song was released on SoundCloud on September 27, the same day that Miami triumphed over Virginia Tech. On September 28, ESPN announced that it was coming to Berkeley. 

Locally, the celebration was massive. Burners had ample reason to raise their cups of Malört, the group’s traditional tailgate drink, but their work was just getting started.

“I do not think that GameDay comes to Cal without the Calgorithm, and I don’t think it comes without the fans. I believe that in my bones.” 

Seeking a wider reach for “Ott to Go,” Admiral Bear asked fellow burner Callie Wake—who not only uses her actual name, but is a meme creator with actual football experience—to whip up an accompanying video. The former high school wide receiver pulled an all-nighter. “I literally fell asleep at my desk,” said Wake, a UC Davis alum who grew up going to Cal football games with her father. “I woke up, still at my desk, saw I was almost done, finished it, posted it, and was still recovering physically and mentally … when a link was posted [announcing that GameDay was coming to Cal].” Community response was rapturous, though few anticipated the impact the effort would achieve. 

Come game day, they got their answer. Not only did thousands of Cal fans surround ESPN’s set in Memorial Glade, but they broke through security gates the previous night to populate the area hours before the 6 a.m. broadcast. At the behest of a Calgorithm push, BART scheduled early-morning trains for the event. Fans carried signs made in bulk by burners. Malört was consumed at dawn. It was all a physical manifestation of one of the movement’s primary goals: substantiating a fan base just as obsessed with their team as those at more prominent football schools. When “Ott to Go” played on the big screen, it was greeted by the crowd as if Joe Kapp himself had come down to anoint the faithful. 

“I do not think that GameDay comes to Cal without the Calgorithm, and I don’t think it comes without the fans,” said burner Tyler Tomei. “I believe that in my bones.” 

Alas, Cal lost that day in typically painful fashion, blowing a 38–18 fourth-quarter lead to fall, 39–38, on a Miami touchdown with 26 seconds remaining. Broadcaster Rece Davis referencing “Ott to Go” on the air was small consolation. The defeat was part of a run that saw the Golden Bears drop seven of their final 10 games to finish the season under .500 while going 2–6 in conference. At least they beat Stanford. 

In March, Cal hired Ron Rivera—the former NFL player and head coach was an All-American linebacker for the Golden Bears from 1980 to 1983—to the new position of general manager, a move that signaled to fans the school’s seriousness about turning the program around. Undoubtedly recognizing a built-in groundswell of support, Rivera’s staff connected with members of the Calgorithm early on. 

“Rivera has a more modern outlook about where Cal needs to be as a football program, and also getting the wider Bay Area invested the way it was back in the heyday of the Tedford era,” said Kunnath. “We have to be more forthright about reaching out to the community so we’re not just hemorrhaging fans.”

Will the Calgorithm ride again to glory? Certainly it keeps chugging along. There will probably be no follow-up to “Ott to Go” or even much replaying of the original given that Ott himself has since transferred to Oklahoma. (Although, Rece Davis has continued to sing it at ESPN.) But new stars have emerged, including freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, the hottest prospect since Aaron Rodgers and Jared Goff played under center at Cal. As burner SisterSportz posted to X after the victorious season opener against Oregon State: “Calgorithm math is that Jared + Aaron = Jaron.” 

There are other goals at which to aim. Le has been spearheading a movement to leverage the Calgorithm on behalf of the university. “People were really excited to be a part of something larger and were ready to throw money around,” he said. This fall, the Calgorithm raised $28,000 for the Cal Athletics Fund in a week. Some of the support even came from people outside the Golden Bears fan base. “It feels deeply validating to the way we have conducted ourselves,” said Le. 

If this all sounds good to you, it’s not hard to join. Just go online and follow the memes. 

Jason Turbow is the author of Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), about the Swingin’ A’s of the 1970s, and They Bled Blue (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), about the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers, among other titles. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Sports Illustrated.