• Loading stock data...
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
The biggest names in sports media. All in one room. Get your ticket now!

How the Calgorithm Turned College Football Twitter Into Real Life

  • Cal football fans have gone viral on social media with AI-generated memes and inside jokes as the team has picked up steam.
  • The “Calgorithm” caught the attention of ESPN, which makes its first “GameDay” trip to Berkeley on Saturday.
The Cal mascot, Oski
Ron Chenoy/Imagn Images
Aug 21, 2021; Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; Former Panthers wide receiver and now commentator Steve Smith Sr. before the game between the Carolina Panthers and Baltimore Ravens at Bank of America Stadium.
Exclusive

Steve Smith Moves His Podcast, ‘The 89 Show,’ to Blue Wire

The show is co-hosted by Smith and NFL insider James Palmer.
Read Now
September 2, 2025 |

Linebacker Cade Uluave was at practice, training with his Cal Golden Bears teammates for the big game against No. 8 Miami Hurricanes on Saturday. An intense situation, and yet Uluave had “Ott to Go,” a parody video of Chappell Roan’s blockbuster “Hot to Go,” running through his head “all practice, I’m not going to lie,” he told reporters Tuesday. 

Star running back Jaydn Ott laughed when Uluave went up to him and started singing the song. A band of fervent Cal fans had hired a singer to produce the music video, which dropped a few days before. 

“Ott to Go” is just the latest instance of Cal football Twitter becoming real life.

On the field, the Bears are 3–1. It’s a modest start, but a glimmer of hope after several years mired in mediocrity. Off the field, Cal fans have staked a claim to being one of the last fun things on Elon Musk–era Twitter, taking social media by storm with millions of views on their viral AI-generated memes.

The players are enjoying the jokes, and the fan base has been reenergized further by ESPN’s College GameDay coming to Berkeley for the first time ever Saturday. Players like Aaron Rodgers, Marshawn Lynch, Jared Goff, and DeSean Jackson have all gone through Berkeley, but none earned the coveted spotlight of college football’s famous traveling road show, leaving Cal as one of only six power conference schools GameDay had never visited. You could argue the “Calgorithm” did what those legends could not.

“All the Cal burners or whatever you want to call them, they’re doing a great job. The Calgorithm, I’ve seen that a few times on Twitter or X, and I think it’s great. I think it’s awesome,” Uluave said.

Broadly speaking, the memes lean in to the stereotype of Berkeley as a bastion for hippies and liberals. The 1988 Notre Dame–Miami game was famously “Catholics vs. Convicts.” Saturday’s matchup is “Woke vs. Coke.”

Being “woke” is at the heart of the Calgorithm. Posts before the Florida State game jokingly declared the game “Open Borders Night” with free tickets and beer for undocumented immigrants. Others showed the renamed “Woke Campbell Stadium” (actually called Doak Campbell) with pride flags, a gender neutral bathroom sign, and a Harris-Walz campaign poster.

https://twitter.com/CoreyECohen/status/1837681874514137499

Many threatened that courses about “critical race theory,” banned in Florida schools, would be taught at halftime.

“I think there was a stadium one, too, which had a Florida State seating chart, and I think it was color coded by rainbow and it had sections based off of your political agenda,” Avinash Kunnath, who runs the Cal football blog “Write for California,” tells Front Office Sports. “I think we’ve just played very deeply into the Berkeley stereotype.”

The memes are in part a byproduct of the realignment-induced oddity of Cal regularly playing schools from the South, which only heightens the contrast between the liberal Bay Area and schools in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. (Miami is traveling over 2,500 miles to play the Bears.)

“I think that fed well into creating interesting and hilarious images, Photoshops, videos, all that jazz that helped us lean way more in to the identity that made it really funny from a cultural perspective,” says Kunnath.

Plus, the school isn’t siloed off on the Pac-12 Network anymore, but instead enjoys national media distribution on ESPN. (That’s the very dynamic that led to the collapse of the Pac-12 in the first place.) The result is that national college football fans are more aware of Cal and its fan base. As a bonus, being in the ACC provides a bit of a breather from a football perspective, compared to a Pac-12 slate that included Washington, Oregon, Oregon State, Utah, and USC last year. “I think they’re probably better equipped to not be terrible, which is great,” Grant Marek, a Cal alum and editor-in-chief of SFGate, tells FOS.


One post in particular launched the Calgorithm into the national consciousness. In response to Auburn’s official football account posting the final score from its loss to the Bears, one user responded with a meme that read: “You just lost to the woke agenda,” overlaid with images including a rainbow, Cal football players, and vice president Kamala Harris. The post currently has five million views and close to 70,000 likes on X.

“That prompted us I think to get a little better organized and to try a little harder, but the Cal fan burner community online has been a thing for years,” says one member of the Calgorithm who goes under the pseudonym Admiral Bear.

https://twitter.com/golDonbear/status/1832555206569292233

Jokes are passed around between about 120 fans in a group chat called “Calgorithm Memes For Deranged Wilcox Teens,” a reference to head coach Justin Wilcox. Some of the most prolific members are alumni in their 30s and 40s, some of whom work in media, but many in tech or law, hence the pseudonyms. There’s also a smaller group called the “Council of Meme Distribution” that’s currently brainstorming, fundraising, and printing signs to be featured on the GameDay broadcast.

“So Oski is the mascot for Cal,” he says. “He’s a weird mascot. He’s a bear, but he’s not ferocious. He’s sort of just ominous. So we like to joke that we’re all just humble servants of the dark lord Oski. We’re doing his bidding. That’s what this is for. None of us want glory or credit. All glory goes to Oski.”

The Calgorithm had a field day with the Florida State game, but the community stayed consistent—and relevant—despite the loss and a bye week, with sights set on landing GameDay. The phrase #FightForCalGameDay went viral on X, accompanied by memes of ESPN’s crew with bear heads or driving a classic Volkswagen hippie van to Berkeley.

A representative for GameDay said that there are many factors that go into picking a site for the week, but “enthusiasm with Cal Football Twitter definitely didn’t hurt.”

ESPN isn’t the only company to join in on the fun. Safeway grocery stores in the area have started displaying a Calgorithm meme of a Cal Bear and Miami Ibis holding up peace signs at the GameDay desk (and a QR code for the school’s NIL fund). The public transportation system, BART, is displaying the same meme in its stations, and announced early-morning trains to accommodate GameDay with a meme of its own. (Being on the West Coast, GameDay starts at 6 a.m. local time, which is 13 and a half hours before the night game’s kickoff.)

As the Calgorithm has grown, its members have become friends with other fan bases, even flying a couple of them out to their tailgates. At one of the pregame parties largely filled with Calgorithm fans, everybody takes a shot of the niche Chicago drink Jeppson’s Malört before games. It’s a proven method: A victory on Saturday would be the 10th win in a row when the tailgaters drink Malört before a game in the state of California.

“On paper, I think it’s a tough matchup,” Admiral Bear says, “but we’re hoping that the vibes carry us to victory.”

Linkedin
Whatsapp
Copy Link
Link Copied
Link Copied

What to Read

The cast of ESPN College GameDay begins their show prior to the NCAA football game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns at Ohio Stadium on Aug. 30, 2025. The show is the final one for Lee Corso.

OSU Sophomore Wins $250K in McAfee ‘GameDay’ Kicking Contest

The former NFL punter started offering prize money for kicks in 2023.

NFL’s 16-Game International Slate of Games Nears Reality

The league will play a record seven games outside the U.S. this season.
Aug 30, 2025; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) drops back to pass against the Ohio State Buckeyes in the first half at Ohio Stadium.

On This Year’s CFB Rosters, Even Backup QBs Make Six Figures

The going rate for backup quarterbacks is in the mid-six-figures.

NFL on Nielsen’s Latest Measurement Upgrade: ‘More Work to Be Done’

The league calls its relationship with the agency a “protracted journey.”

Featured Today

Oct 13, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) and wide receiver A.J. Brown (11) celebrate their touchdown pass during the second quarter against the Cleveland Browns at Lincoln Financial Field.

TV Ratings Just Changed Again. The NFL Will Be the Big Winner

Nielsen’s new viewership system will have a big impact on sports.
Ohio State Buckeyes wide receiver Jeremiah Smith (4) celebrates with offensive lineman Donovan Jackson (74) after a touchdown catch against Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the first quarter during the College Football Playoff National Championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on January 20, 2025.
August 30, 2025

The Most Expensive Roster Year in College Football History

The House settlement created revenue-sharing—and a big NIL loophole.
August 26, 2025

‘You’re Going to Get Beat Up’: The Liberty’s All-Male Practice Squad

A select group suits up weekly to take on the defending champs.
August 24, 2025

The Honey Deuce Effect: How Tennis Perfected the Signature Cocktail

Sold every 1.5 seconds, they total more than $12 million in sales.
Mike Gundy

OSU’s Gundy, Oregon’s Lanning Trade Barbs Over Alleged $30 Million Gap

Lanning ripped Gundy’s “excuse” and said “we spend to win.”
September 2, 2025

Less Belichick Hype Could Mean Bad News for CFB Stakeholders

UNC had never begun a football season with so much hype.
FSU
September 2, 2025

ACC Hits Florida State With First $50K Storming Fine Under New Rule

The ACC announced a new fine system in July.
Sponsored

Gareth Bale on MLS vs EPL, Retirement & Buying Cardiff City

Gareth Bale shares his post-soccer business playbook.
September 1, 2025

Bill Belichick’s Star-Studded UNC Coaching Debut Turns Ugly

Michael Jordan highlighted a long list of celebrities in attendance.
August 30, 2025

5 of 10 Highest-Paid CFB Coaches Lose in Week 1

Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer was the biggest surprise of the Week 1 losers.
August 29, 2025

Cody Campbell Asks Congress to Allow National College Sports TV Package

The billionaire’s ad will air on ESPN and Fox this weekend.
Ohio State mascot Brutus interacts with Lee Corso on the set of ESPN College GameDay prior to the College Football Playoff first round game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and Tennessee Volunteers in Columbus on Dec. 21, 2024.
August 29, 2025

End of an Era: Lee Corso Makes His Final ‘College GameDay’ Appearance

After 431 iconic headgear picks, the iconic coach bids farewell.