Because of the athletic connotation of Cal and the university brand of Berkeley, the recommendation of the university task force is to merge the two together.
If you can't figure out that Cal = UC Berkeley, maybe you are too stupid to go here. After all, The Band is announced as "The University of California Marching Band." /sarc
I have gear that says "Cal," gear that says "Cal Berkeley," and gear that says "U.C. Berkeley." Sounds like both the University and Athletic Dept. PR departments need to do a better job. Couldn't this be an Senior or MBA project for someone at Haas School of Business?
This could have all been avoided if that stupid fucking "You See Berkeley!" commercial had simply been fired into the sun as soon as the idea to use a pun as the pitch for our school was made... over twenty years ago
"Evolve and elevate Berkeley as the principal campus brand. Lead with Berkeley in academic, administrative, auxiliary, community, development and student life contexts, especially in naming campus units."
"Cal and Golden Bears may be used when naming athletic/fan offerings but not when naming institutional offerings."
So, basically, no change at all, outside of: awkwardly appending "Berkeley" to all our sports teams, further distancing from UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, OUR ACTUAL SCHOOL NAME (seriously, what the fuck). Athletics still the relegated bastard, with "Cal" and "Golden Bears" not to be used for institional offerings. Like bruh, if that's what "unity" means to you, I don't think you know what unity means.
Need to show more data, particularly how staff and students at Cal universities (separately) voted on how consuing their school names and similar alternatives are confusing are 1) students, 2) staff, and 3) graduates, 4 people with no connection to the relevant university.
Stupid, stupid idea!! This lessens the gravity of the brand for sports,. Put simply, this pours us into the basket of names like “NC Charlotte”, “Wisconsin Green Bay”, “Cal Irvine” etc. Get it straight: we are the ORIGINAL University of California. Leave it as such for sports branding. And, as far as “confusing” is concerned. this so-called difficulty is only problematic if you’ve never taken the time to actually learn what this university is. If a person can’t then discern what is Berkeley, what is Cal/California and what is the University of California, Berkeley, then why are we spending time changing (and in my mind diminishing the branding punch) for those that can’t figure it out. Enraging move. I don’t want to see “Cal Berkeley” emblazoned on the fifty yard line. There is only one CAL, and it happens to be in Berkeley. Changing our sports name as proposed by the committee would be like UGA changing its name to Georgia Athens, Virginia changing its name to Virginia Charlottesville, or Michigan changing its official sports name to “Michigan Ann Arbor - all horrible ideas. Am I in the minority?
Academics = University of California and/or University of California, Berkeley
Athletics = California and/or Cal
Why couldn't we on the athletics side simply add 'Berkeley,' with 'University of California' underneath it,(like in the UCB webpage) or just 'Berkeley,' to the uniforms? In football, we could place this on the lower back part of the helmets, where it now says 'California' in script letters, and switch the 'California' script to the front of the jersey above the number, where it currently says 'Cal.
EDIT: Also, keep the Cal script on the helmet by itself.
Just had a thought re: Boalt and Berkeley Law. In the legal world, no one batted an eye at the name change. One year it was Boalt, the next it was Berkeley Law. USNWR rankings didn’t take a hit, the pedigree remained (and remains) the same in academic circles, and the student outcomes (big law jobs, clerkships) also weren’t adversely affected.
Academic elites will adjust to calling Berkeley as California and the university will maintain the same luster. We just need to be bold enough to make that change
Add this task force to the list of people who need to be fired for incompetence.
I get what they're doing but I still have abso-fucking-lutely no clue why they insist we keep "UC Berkeley" separate from Athletics. We discover we're the only school that does that*, we create a task force to study the stupid, self-inflicted injury, and we come up with something no one's going to be happy with. Just tear down the damn barrier and be done with it. Put "Berkeley" on some away uniforms and in one of our end zones.
If these recs, somehow, create a bureaucratic loophole to use "Cal" and "Berkeley" in separate places as long as they're both present then that's cool. But that's not what I see (because UC Berkeley).
*A lot of schools are like Michigan (Ann Arbor) or Texas (Austin) where the flagship campus is implied without the city name. It's good that Berkeley has a great reputation so why not just let Athletics use it outright? No one's going to confuse the football team for the physics department.
Army had a similar branding problem. Few people knew "Army" was the U.S. Military Academy, but most people had heard of West Point. They now call themselves "Army West Point" to make the connection. I'm not sure why Navy doesn't have a simlar problem, as they are now still just "Navy", not "Navy Annapolis".
Being an old timer and purist, I prefer "California", and will to the day I die. There is no "Texas Austin", "Maryland College Park", Michigan Ann Arbor", "Oklahoma Armpit of the World" (1970s throwback there) or any other nonsense. The lesser UCs can stuff it if they feel offended.
I hate the Cal Berkeley idea. After reading through 166 comments, I agree with most everyone that the suggestion really does not solve anything. It only cheapens our school by making it similar to over 2 dozen other schools. I don't think it's our place to educate anyone (on the intricacies and variations of our school name). If we want to elevate our branding, we just need to be consistent and strengthen the product associated with the brand. Esp. as we move into the ACC (and hopefully into the TV homes of many new sports fans), we need to keep our 155 year branding tradition of California and Cal intact! Go Bears!
What a pointless survey. We ALREADY KNEW a branding issue existed, so why on Earth did we run a poll asking people if they were confused by our branding? We ALREADY KNEW athletics prefers Cal and academia prefers Berkeley. How is it that out of all 4 suggestions, they chose the 1 we specifically DO NOT use?
UC Berkeley Task Force recommends Cal Berkeley as the new athletic brand name
If you can't figure out that Cal = UC Berkeley, maybe you are too stupid to go here. After all, The Band is announced as "The University of California Marching Band." /sarc
I have gear that says "Cal," gear that says "Cal Berkeley," and gear that says "U.C. Berkeley." Sounds like both the University and Athletic Dept. PR departments need to do a better job. Couldn't this be an Senior or MBA project for someone at Haas School of Business?
This could have all been avoided if that stupid fucking "You See Berkeley!" commercial had simply been fired into the sun as soon as the idea to use a pun as the pitch for our school was made... over twenty years ago
"Evolve and elevate Berkeley as the principal campus brand. Lead with Berkeley in academic, administrative, auxiliary, community, development and student life contexts, especially in naming campus units."
"Cal and Golden Bears may be used when naming athletic/fan offerings but not when naming institutional offerings."
So, basically, no change at all, outside of: awkwardly appending "Berkeley" to all our sports teams, further distancing from UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, OUR ACTUAL SCHOOL NAME (seriously, what the fuck). Athletics still the relegated bastard, with "Cal" and "Golden Bears" not to be used for institional offerings. Like bruh, if that's what "unity" means to you, I don't think you know what unity means.
Gobears49
Need to show more data, particularly how staff and students at Cal universities (separately) voted on how consuing their school names and similar alternatives are confusing are 1) students, 2) staff, and 3) graduates, 4 people with no connection to the relevant university.
Gobears49
https://www.si.com/college/cal/news/name-change-cal-berkeley-recommended
Stupid, stupid idea!! This lessens the gravity of the brand for sports,. Put simply, this pours us into the basket of names like “NC Charlotte”, “Wisconsin Green Bay”, “Cal Irvine” etc. Get it straight: we are the ORIGINAL University of California. Leave it as such for sports branding. And, as far as “confusing” is concerned. this so-called difficulty is only problematic if you’ve never taken the time to actually learn what this university is. If a person can’t then discern what is Berkeley, what is Cal/California and what is the University of California, Berkeley, then why are we spending time changing (and in my mind diminishing the branding punch) for those that can’t figure it out. Enraging move. I don’t want to see “Cal Berkeley” emblazoned on the fifty yard line. There is only one CAL, and it happens to be in Berkeley. Changing our sports name as proposed by the committee would be like UGA changing its name to Georgia Athens, Virginia changing its name to Virginia Charlottesville, or Michigan changing its official sports name to “Michigan Ann Arbor - all horrible ideas. Am I in the minority?
I was hoping for BerCALey
Fine. Now let’s win some games!! That will clear up any confusion
I prefer to keep things the way they are now.
Academics = University of California and/or University of California, Berkeley
Athletics = California and/or Cal
Why couldn't we on the athletics side simply add 'Berkeley,' with 'University of California' underneath it,(like in the UCB webpage) or just 'Berkeley,' to the uniforms? In football, we could place this on the lower back part of the helmets, where it now says 'California' in script letters, and switch the 'California' script to the front of the jersey above the number, where it currently says 'Cal.
EDIT: Also, keep the Cal script on the helmet by itself.
Just had a thought re: Boalt and Berkeley Law. In the legal world, no one batted an eye at the name change. One year it was Boalt, the next it was Berkeley Law. USNWR rankings didn’t take a hit, the pedigree remained (and remains) the same in academic circles, and the student outcomes (big law jobs, clerkships) also weren’t adversely affected.
Academic elites will adjust to calling Berkeley as California and the university will maintain the same luster. We just need to be bold enough to make that change
It's a school for people who can hold two or more conflicting ideas in their heads at the same time. Our names reflect that. Don't dumb it down.
Add this task force to the list of people who need to be fired for incompetence.
I get what they're doing but I still have abso-fucking-lutely no clue why they insist we keep "UC Berkeley" separate from Athletics. We discover we're the only school that does that*, we create a task force to study the stupid, self-inflicted injury, and we come up with something no one's going to be happy with. Just tear down the damn barrier and be done with it. Put "Berkeley" on some away uniforms and in one of our end zones.
If these recs, somehow, create a bureaucratic loophole to use "Cal" and "Berkeley" in separate places as long as they're both present then that's cool. But that's not what I see (because UC Berkeley).
*A lot of schools are like Michigan (Ann Arbor) or Texas (Austin) where the flagship campus is implied without the city name. It's good that Berkeley has a great reputation so why not just let Athletics use it outright? No one's going to confuse the football team for the physics department.
Only Tobias Funke could have come up with a dumber idea.
Army had a similar branding problem. Few people knew "Army" was the U.S. Military Academy, but most people had heard of West Point. They now call themselves "Army West Point" to make the connection. I'm not sure why Navy doesn't have a simlar problem, as they are now still just "Navy", not "Navy Annapolis".
Being an old timer and purist, I prefer "California", and will to the day I die. There is no "Texas Austin", "Maryland College Park", Michigan Ann Arbor", "Oklahoma Armpit of the World" (1970s throwback there) or any other nonsense. The lesser UCs can stuff it if they feel offended.
I hate the Cal Berkeley idea. After reading through 166 comments, I agree with most everyone that the suggestion really does not solve anything. It only cheapens our school by making it similar to over 2 dozen other schools. I don't think it's our place to educate anyone (on the intricacies and variations of our school name). If we want to elevate our branding, we just need to be consistent and strengthen the product associated with the brand. Esp. as we move into the ACC (and hopefully into the TV homes of many new sports fans), we need to keep our 155 year branding tradition of California and Cal intact! Go Bears!
What a pointless survey. We ALREADY KNEW a branding issue existed, so why on Earth did we run a poll asking people if they were confused by our branding? We ALREADY KNEW athletics prefers Cal and academia prefers Berkeley. How is it that out of all 4 suggestions, they chose the 1 we specifically DO NOT use?