Cal football NIL 2024 fundraising drive: Set up our Golden Bears for success in the ACC

The California Golden Bears fanbase needs to step up with critical NIL donations to ensure the health of our program moving forward

Cal fans, this is the week to donate to the Cal Legends NIL. Collective.

Photo credit: Rob Hwang

This fall, on a week’s notice, the Cal community stepped up and raised $1.2 million for our NIL to support Golden Bears football.

This took ONE week.

This helped raise important funds for our football team to compete and get the resources ready for making sure our primary roster contributors stay in Berkeley.

Now comes the critical juncture.

• Several prominent Golden Bears have been identified and targeted as top prospects in the transfer portal. You don’t have to take too many guesses as to who.

• A few have already entered the portal. Others are deliberating.

• Cal has identified top targets in the transfer portal. But the competition is steep.

• Resource-wise, while Cal has been competing well relative to its former Pac-12 brethren, the coffers have opened up even more as realignment hits full swing, and the Bears are starting to fall behind.

So at the moment, IT IS MORE CRITICAL THAN EVER FOR THE CAL FOOTBALL NIL TO BE AS. HEALTHY AS POSSIBLE.

While many of those Bears are happy at Cal, there is always a number in this game that can sway even the best of us.

Now, the most critical part of this fundraising drive.

The hard reality

Cal needs big-monied donors to step in now and chip in.

NIL is here. Not having the people who could make the biggest difference wholeheartedly endorsing and contributing to that endeavor endangers the program.

At the moment, donations have flown in from the passionate Cal fans, but many of us are the paycheck-to-paycheck types, not the ones who can get an athletic director or a real mover on the phone. These are the ones who can move the needle.

So if any of you know someone in your life who cares about the Golden Bears, is in a position of privilege (think ESP chairbacks, think names on buildings and scholarships), and can contribute to the NIL fund, this is the time to make their impact felt.

Please share the message and let them know

It is not just Cal football they are helping.

Cal Athletics is completely at risk, from revenue to non-revenue sports.

If the football program falls, so do likely dozens of non-revenue sports that these people care about.

The funds will simply not be there in the ACC over the next seven years, or whatever conference comes next, on our reduced deal, to prop up an entire department.

Outside assistance is required. That assistance must include us.

There needs to be an increased level of buy-in that does not exist at the current moment from old rich and new rich or we will not be invited to the table where the rest of the major movers sit.

That is not to say if you are just an everyday fan, that you can’t help by chipping in. You can, and you should. Your contributions, in any amount, have been and will always be welcome.

But this is the time to align everyone on the same page.

Cal (particularly in football and men’s basketball) must be good in the ACC, or the entire athletic experiment as we know it is in jeopardy. Our survival as a Power 5 program depends on it.

I’ll be frank. I do not like being put in the position of fundraiser for a mission our athletic department should have prioritized for decades. But we must move forward.

Cal has critical momentum in its place to change the dynamic. It must start today, and it must move quickly.

We have one advantage: Our successful, brilliant, high-achieving fanbase.

These Bears are the ones who can properly reset us for success in the ACC, get us on the path to a major conference, and get the boulder rolling downhill for a reboot for the new age of Cal sports.

Time is short. We only have a few years to get it right.

But years start with days.

Let’s get going. Donate to Cal Legends NIL today.

Roll on you Bears!

(If you feel comfortable doing so, please let us know in the comments if you were able to chip in, just to keep momentum going).