Cal fans delivered on the hype with hilarious "Calgorithm" signs at College GameDay, turning online memes into a witty on-air spectacle. Credit: ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’
College FootballESPNBy Sam Neumann on

If you wondered if the Cal crowd would bring it at College GameDay, wonder no more.

Awful Announcing highlighted the absolute anarchy that happened before the show, but we also wanted to highlight the absurdity of the signs, which included but were not limited to, “I only do lines of code,” “I thought this was a protest,” “You people are blocking the library,” “Miami’s playbook is shorter than my syllabus,” and “Miami cites Wikipedia.”

It’s fair to say that the Calgorithm lived up to the hype and then some.

In case you haven’t been on X (formerly Twitter) this college football season, the Calgorithm made its mark after Cal’s road win over traditional SEC power Auburn to start the season. Before the game, Tiger fans joked about how there weren’t likely to be many Bears fans showing up at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The contrast between Cal’s progressive reputation and Auburn’s more traditionally conservative stance provided the perfect setup for the Calgorithm’s rise.

Following the win, Cal fans on Twitter cleverly flipped conservative messaging and stereotypes, humorously attributing their victory to things like the “woke agenda” and “preferred pronouns.”

And that’s exactly what they did with their signs, as they brought online sh*t posting and turned it on its head to show up and show out in person for GameDay at Berkeley.

In the end, the Cal crowd didn’t just show up — they made a statement. Berkeley turned College GameDay into a showcase of both wit and pride. And it also showcased that perhaps GameDay won’t wait so long next time to return to Cal’s campus a second time.

The question isn’t whether they’ll keep it up — it’s how they’ll top it next time.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann