With 'The Woke Agenda,' Calgorithm propels California football into social media spotlight

In a fiery political climate, one word has become both a term used to describe being conscious of issues and a demeaning name of certain ideologies: woke.

It’s almost a taboo word, but there’s one place in the East Bay of California that not only doesn’t mind it, but has embraced it to thrust themselves into the national spotlight.

Welcome to the California Golden Bears football team, and “The Woke Agenda” of the Calgorithm.

For those fans that aren’t chronically online, they may be shocked to see the academic powerhouse university even has fans. But in fact, Cal fans have already taken the award for the most creative online presence in college football this season.

Throughout social media, many fans have owned the idea that people who support or attend UC Berkeley are left-leaning, progressive nerds that preach ideals like diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as communism and critical race theory. Mix that with the fact Cal is now in the ACC and playing schools from places that may have different political preferences than them, and you got gold.

While hilarious in its fun memes, the Calgorithm has worked because the Golden Bears are in the middle of something special. An enigma in the new ACC, Cal has started the season a surprising 3-1 that includes a road win at Auburn. Now, Cal football is on the national radar with ESPN’s “College GameDay” headed to Berkeley for the first time in history. The game? Against No. 8 Miami for its first ACC home contest.

No one could have predicted the hype surrounding Cal just a few weeks ago, let alone know it was possible. But thanks to a bunch of meme-loving fanatics, Cal football is ready to show out.

“With all the kind of disruption that college football has entered into in the last couple years, it's an incredibly opportunistic time for a place like us that has untapped potential, and we're looking forward to being the ones to tap that potential,” said head coach Justin Wilcox.

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The science of the Calgorithm

If you’re one of the several people who were introduced to the Calgorithm this year, it’s nothing new. There’s been a circle, albeit small, that has been rabid for their Golden Bears for years.

With the success online and on the field, the circle has ballooned over the weeks. Now it’s a mix of longtime online fans like Admiral Bear, students like Miles Goodman and people like Callie who got heavily involved in the fandom just a few weeks ago. Admiral Bear and Callie requested anonymity to keep their identities private for work reasons.

Heading into this season, most Cal fans were “cautiously optimistic,” according to Admiral Bear. Opening the season with a win over UC Davis was expected, but few saw Cal going into SEC territory and defeating Auburn at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

After that game, the Calgorithm exploded onto the scene. Admiral Bear said it was Goodman that did it, posting an image that said “you just lost to the woke agenda.” In it are President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Cal’s mascot Oski, a rainbow and the electoral map of the 2020 election.

“That was kind of a result of us trying to play into the fact that there are a lot of assumptions made about Cal as a university historically,” Goodman said of the meme. “By tackling that label from basically like a satirical lens, we are forming our own relationship with it, defining our own terms, while simultaneously poking fun at how other teams have perceived our community.”

Since then, college football timelines have been swarmed by memes you’d think come from the most stereotypical California resident perceived by someone that despises the state. Ahead of the Florida State game, Goodman posted a meme calling the Seminoles stadium “Woke” Campbell Stadium with Harris presidential signs, Admiral Bear posted a photo of a bear with a shirt that says “open borders” at the stadium and Callie made a joke that she needed to know which bathrooms had litter boxes since her “daughter identifies as an ocelot,” playing on the conspiracy theory from 2022.

Even after the Golden Bears lost to Florida State and the Seminoles got their first win of the season, the Calgorithm spun it around by saying the team was just spreading communism by giving out wins to teams in need.

There’s a lot of ridiculousness in the Calgorithm, and it’s all planned. Whether it's made by using layers of Photoshop or using artificial intelligence, there are group chats that discuss how and what memes will be made based on whom Cal is playing.

But one rule in the Calgorithm is to never make fun of the opponent’s fans. Yes, most of the stuff said is bait, but only to make fun of themselves.

“It's not about punching down on somebody,” Callie said. “It's about goofing on an idea that has been accepted as some kernel of truth has been accepted in a community. So, like the more right wing, wacky ideas of what leftists or left-leaning people do, and then taking it to a 12.”

The Calgorithm has gotten so massive the team is even aware of it. Wilcox said he’s heard of some of the stuff but he has “enough to consider” when it comes to his job. But sophomore linebacker Cade Uluave is deep in it.

Just to show how dedicated the Calgorithm is to its craft, on Saturday, Callie – with the help of Admiral Bear and others – posted “Ott to go,” a song admiring star running back Jaydn Ott that parodies Chappell Roan’s hit song “Hot To Go!” Callie made the “music video” for it and Calgorithm members actually paid an artist named Micky Hage – not A.I. – to sing it in Roan’s style.

Uluave saw the video and said Tuesday he couldn’t stop singing it at practice. He even went up to Ott and sang the song to him.

“All the Cal burners, or whatever you want to call them, they're doing a great job,” Uluave said. “Whoever made that, and whatever it was, I'll give it a 10 out of 10.”

The Calgorithm in fact has infected all of Berkeley.

Putting Cal in the spotlight

It was just over a year ago when Cal athletics looked to be in a spiral. Already facing massive debt, the university was left out of its former Pac-12 conference members bolting for the Big Ten and Big 12.

Cal, along with rival Stanford, petitioned to join the ACC, but an early straw poll about the idea of the conference expanding resulted in there not being enough votes to add. A month later, there were enough votes to add Cal, Stanford and SMU and provide a safety net to the Bears.

The turbulent past year is what made those in the Calgorithm realize they needed to spearhead extra care not only for the team, but the entire athletic department, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“We can't afford a catastrophe. We were really staring death in the face and the ACC gave us a life raft, barely,” Admiral Bear said. “That kind of existential crisis for our football program that we care about so much has really inspired us to double and triple our efforts to raise the profile of this program.”

The extra effort has also given Cal a chance to rebrand itself as its introduction to its new conference mates. ACC schools may have thought they were just getting another top-rated university where sports don’t have much interest, but the Calgorithm has smashed that perception.

“I think it is very slowly chipping away at the whole ‘Cal has no fans narrative.’ Cal is obviously a school that's known for academics, they don't really invest a lot in athletics. And that's just false,” Goodman said.

“It's important that we make sure that everybody in the ACC on the East Coast kind of knows we're here, we are to be taken seriously,” Callie added.

The Calgorithm, mixed with the team’s solid start to the season, has been successful, and that likely is the reason why "College GameDay" is headed to Berkeley for the first time. Cal is one of seven Power Four schools that hasn’t hosted the show since it started touring in 1993.

Those within the Calgorithm don’t want to take all the credit for getting the popular ESPN show to finally visit, but it certainly played a role. Yes, playing a top 10-ranked team like Miami is a factor, but College GameDay and the national spotlight don't work if there aren’t fans. Goodman said Cal “memed our way” into getting the show, and Admiral Bear said the Calgorithm likely gave ESPN some comfort that people would actually show up if it went to the campus.

It’s looking like it’ll be quite the crowd for the show that will start at 6 a.m. local time and Cal has sold a significant amount of tickets to the game. Goodman is seeing – and feeling – all the buzz as well. A graduate student, Goodman said his cohort and students around campus keep talking about the football team. They want to be up early for the show and make sure they are in California Memorial Stadium for kickoff.

A filled-up stadium will be a welcome site for a fanbase that hasn’t really seen much of it outside of “The Big Game” against Stanford. Like its UC counterpart UCLA and pretty much every team in the Golden State, if there isn’t constant success, no one is going to show up.

“If you're kind of a middling team, much less a bad team in California, nobody in SEC country knows who you are or cares,” Admiral Bear said. “We have to be good and we have to give people a reason to come.”

Knowing how big the moment is at an academically-driven place, Wilcox also encouraged students to “get their studying done at another time, so they'll be there bright and early” for "College GameDay." The BART public transportation service in the Bay Area is even part of the Calgorithm and is offering early rides to make sure all fans can get to campus.

“There's a lot of interest, and also kind of an acknowledgement that this is a moment. This is arguably the team's biggest game in the past 20-25 years,” Goodman said. “I think a lot of students are cognizant of that and are really, really excited for the chance to kind of be involved in something like that.”

It’s certainly a moment in Berkeley. The Calgorithm has shown how the lengths it will go for its team. As Goodman puts it, he’s glad to be surrounded by people who have the same values and humor as him and “all want to do their part in kind of putting this program on a national spotlight.”

“It's a very, very tight knit community, and we're bonded by obviously the tough losses, the gut-wrenching losses, but also a lot of joy and optimism for the future of this program,” he said.

The best part about it? It’s not going to go away.

“Regardless of what happens this Saturday or in the Saturdays to come, the Calgorithm will still be there,” Callie said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: California football ruling social media with Calgorithm memes