Cal Legends Collective NIL announces fundraising drives for football, basketball
Cal football is targeting $1 million NIL, Cal men's basketball $500,000, and Cal women's basketball $250,000.
In the wake of a relatively solid month in Cal news, the Cal Legends Collective (responsible for our NIL efforts to our student athletes) is going all in to try and close on spring transfer recruits to bolster up our three big programs as we transition to the ACC for the biggest year in modern program history.
In the opinion of your humble blog president, there is never been a better time for every Cal fan to make a difference than by contributing whatever they can to Cal’s NIL funds. These are the wishes of every coach in Berkeley. It is the currency that can move the Bears from afterthought to contender in everyone of the sports that Cal needs to be competitive in to remain a player in major college athletics.
Cal has a new chancellor in Rich Lyons who will be the most invested leader we we will ever have in our program. If you have a voice that matters, this is the time to reach out and discuss Cal’s future in realignment, improving its brand, your ideas for/criticisms of the athletic department, etc.
Cal football has already proven the success of NIL with two straight top-25 transfer portal classes that lifted the Bears from the basement back into bowl eligibility to a potential position as a relatively solid ACC contender. The goal is $1 million. You can donate here.
Cal men’s basketball has extended rising head coach in Mark Madsen who is happy to be in the Bay Area, and needs NIL funds to close in on an ACC-worthy portal class. The goal is half a million. You can donate here.
Cal women’s basketball has a great recruiter in Charmin Smith who has begun the turnaround with women’s hoops. She needs funds to keep building on last year’s improvements. The goal is a quarter of a million. You can donate here.
I cannot personally ask any of you to donate, but I will put my money where my mouth is worth. I have already made a $1000 donation to Cal football NIL earlier this year. A callout for matching contributions helped us raise over five figures in Cal football NIL donations.
Today, I have chipped in another $500 to men’s basketball and $250 to women’s basketball and will be making a call out to others to donate soon.
I would encourage you to donate to whichever one of these three programs you feel, whether it’s matching or whether it’s at the figure you feel most comfortable. I’d also encourage you to leave comments so we can show how invested the Write For California community is in our success.
I know it feels exhausting and exasperating that we must continuously be asked for our money, but this is where we’re at. It’s now or never for Cal Athletics.
The college arms race is accelerating toward endgame, and if Cal doesn’t take themselves seriously, our place in that space will not be there for us. The Bears have to be good, now, or we will be facing the same existential questions Oregon State and Washington State fans are grappling with at this time.
In my opinion, there is no time to wait and see. This is the time to go all in. Before we’re all out.
Thanks to all for the support. To answer a few of these questions, the amount being targeted for this fund raising drive is most definitely not the total amount being raised for any of these programs. It’s not close to it. This is supplemental to what we already have. We are trying to turbo charge our efforts to make sure these programs do as well as possible during this upcoming crucial first season in the ACC. You only get a single chance to make a first impression and we badly need to immediately shift the narrative on Cal sports if we want Cal to make it into the next round of conference realignment. Next year is likely too late.
To the objection that this is being done too close to tax time, this timing is to celebrate Rich Lyons being appointed Chancellor (why we named it “Lyons and Transfers and Bears, Oh My!”). It’s also coinciding with the transfer portal window opening and running. We don’t control either one. But waiting a week after the Rich Lyons news so tax day would have passed was likely not going to increase our haul. Our drive is going to run until May 1st so if people feel richer a day or a week after tax day God bless. I know I don’t.
As to the idea it is “tone deaf” to put the WBB goal at less than the men’s goals, these goals are not some kind of value judgement on the worth of the programs or the coaches. They are a reflection of the amounts that would be meaningful to each program. $250k (on top of what we already have) would be game changing for WBB. It would have far less impact on football. That’s not a Cal thing. That is true at every school across the land.
California Legends is one of the few college collectives that cover ALL of the school’s sports. Most collectives are only for football and MBB. Gender equity is very important for us. But we live in the real world. It simply costs more to provide meaningful NIL opportunities for male players for a lot of the same reasons WNBA salaries are a small fraction of those for the NBA. But If we thought we could raise $1m for WBB by saying that’s the goal then we would do it in a heartbeat. But coming up with a goal that can’t and won’t be met is just going to embarrass the program and harm the overall objective.
Those disliking this strategy are more than welcome to prove us wrong. The goal is not is not a cap. But we haven’t flipped live on the WBB drive because we haven’t received anywhere close even to our $250k goal, much less what we want for football or MBB.
Please provide Coach Smith (and all our coaches) with all the help you can. Thank you.
All 3 programs need NIL to compete.
If you can, please donate to MBB, WBB and FB. All donations are helpful and shows support for our teams
calegends.com
MBB:
http://spot.fund/bnjhdsc
WBB:
http://spot.fund/7zdzssc
Football
http://spot.fund/dt3zfsc