"Cal Berkeley" does not roll off the tongue well at all as a sports brand. It's actually snooty sounding. It also leaves the school open to mis-identification as a Cal State Fill-in-the-Blank school (most of which, by the way, are actually terrific schools, but for UC Berkeley's athletic branding - NO!). A rebranding of athletics using "…
"Cal Berkeley" does not roll off the tongue well at all as a sports brand. It's actually snooty sounding. It also leaves the school open to mis-identification as a Cal State Fill-in-the-Blank school (most of which, by the way, are actually terrific schools, but for UC Berkeley's athletic branding - NO!). A rebranding of athletics using "California" seems the best approach here. The universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Carolina, for example, all do something similar, although none of them have a peer system campus outside of Ann Arbor, Madison, Charlottesville, or Chapel Hill like we do in LA to compete with. They're all known athletically simply by their state's name. On football helmets, the script "Cal" is gorgeous and fitting - both in terms of identification and actual space for the letters. Works great for other helmeted sports also. For all sports, a script "California" across the chest is perfectly wonderful. You could even have "Berkeley" in smaller type beneath the script "California" if you insist on tying the academic and athletic aspects of the university a bit closer together, and to more distinguish them from other UC schools. But you would still refer to the sports teams simply as "California". And "Cal" will always remain a great nickname for "California"!
As others have noted, UC Berkeley (or just Berkeley) is near universally regarded as one of the 6 premier academics- and research-focused universities in the English-speaking world (along with Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge). Nobody anywhere, when considering the university from an academic perspective, refers to it as anything other than UC Berkeley or Berkeley. When my wife's family in London heard that our son was accepted to and is attending Berkeley this year (math, physics, and music major), they all went absolutely bonkers with pride - such is the esteem the school is held in on the other side of the Pond and elsewhere. It was exactly equal to our nephew getting accepted to Cambridge this year. For them, college athletics in its entirety is maddingly confusing - it's almost non-existent outside of the US. They would not have distinguished "Cal" from Adam from an academic perspective. No sense whatsoever in confusing the 99% of the world's population that does not follow Cal sports at all by putting out some new tag that mixes the Cal and UC Berkeley brands - it might even detract from the UC Berkeley (or Berkeley) academic brand. In all honesty, if a plurality or even majority of the US population does not currently identify Cal and UC Berkeley as the same school, so what? Not everyone in the States follows college athletics and/or college academics anyway, so why force the issue? Who cares if most of the country, for example, does not identify Old Miss with the University of Mississippi at Oxford?
Anyway, for the sports folks, get them hooked on "California" athletics - the script "Cal" on football and other helmets should cement "Cal" with "California" in their minds. Slipping in a small-type "Berkeley" beneath "California" on those jerseys will help tie athletic and academic ends together if that were deemed necessary/important. For the rest of the world that knows us as UC Berkeley or Berkeley, leave well enough alone and don't confuse the issue with yet another brand. This is an elite academic institution that does not need to make excuses for its brand or name.
Sorry this was so wordy. I'm like that sometimes:(
"Cal Berkeley" does not roll off the tongue well at all as a sports brand. It's actually snooty sounding. It also leaves the school open to mis-identification as a Cal State Fill-in-the-Blank school (most of which, by the way, are actually terrific schools, but for UC Berkeley's athletic branding - NO!). A rebranding of athletics using "California" seems the best approach here. The universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Carolina, for example, all do something similar, although none of them have a peer system campus outside of Ann Arbor, Madison, Charlottesville, or Chapel Hill like we do in LA to compete with. They're all known athletically simply by their state's name. On football helmets, the script "Cal" is gorgeous and fitting - both in terms of identification and actual space for the letters. Works great for other helmeted sports also. For all sports, a script "California" across the chest is perfectly wonderful. You could even have "Berkeley" in smaller type beneath the script "California" if you insist on tying the academic and athletic aspects of the university a bit closer together, and to more distinguish them from other UC schools. But you would still refer to the sports teams simply as "California". And "Cal" will always remain a great nickname for "California"!
As others have noted, UC Berkeley (or just Berkeley) is near universally regarded as one of the 6 premier academics- and research-focused universities in the English-speaking world (along with Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge). Nobody anywhere, when considering the university from an academic perspective, refers to it as anything other than UC Berkeley or Berkeley. When my wife's family in London heard that our son was accepted to and is attending Berkeley this year (math, physics, and music major), they all went absolutely bonkers with pride - such is the esteem the school is held in on the other side of the Pond and elsewhere. It was exactly equal to our nephew getting accepted to Cambridge this year. For them, college athletics in its entirety is maddingly confusing - it's almost non-existent outside of the US. They would not have distinguished "Cal" from Adam from an academic perspective. No sense whatsoever in confusing the 99% of the world's population that does not follow Cal sports at all by putting out some new tag that mixes the Cal and UC Berkeley brands - it might even detract from the UC Berkeley (or Berkeley) academic brand. In all honesty, if a plurality or even majority of the US population does not currently identify Cal and UC Berkeley as the same school, so what? Not everyone in the States follows college athletics and/or college academics anyway, so why force the issue? Who cares if most of the country, for example, does not identify Old Miss with the University of Mississippi at Oxford?
Anyway, for the sports folks, get them hooked on "California" athletics - the script "Cal" on football and other helmets should cement "Cal" with "California" in their minds. Slipping in a small-type "Berkeley" beneath "California" on those jerseys will help tie athletic and academic ends together if that were deemed necessary/important. For the rest of the world that knows us as UC Berkeley or Berkeley, leave well enough alone and don't confuse the issue with yet another brand. This is an elite academic institution that does not need to make excuses for its brand or name.
Sorry this was so wordy. I'm like that sometimes:(