From the article:
The 18-person task force formed to come up with a solution to combine the school’s academic name (UC Berkeley) with its athletics name (Cal) produced an 18-page report that concludes this:
Recommendation #3
Shift the athletics identity to Cal Berkeley in both name and logo. Develop a visual identity that clearly communicates this shift.
In essence, the “Cal” and “UC Berkeley” names were merged for sports in this recommendation.
On one hand, I didn’t realize Cal was the same school as UC Berkeley until Texas played them in 2015 (before I became a total cfb nerd), so I understand the desire to alleviate confusion.
On the other, they botched a rebranding effort not that long ago and I totally foresee the students rebelling against this, too.
Also, while I’ve always referred to the school as “Cal Berkeley” anyway, I was under the impression that was frowned upon – that it’s either “Cal” or “UC Berkeley” but not the two smashed together.
I’m a Cal alum. This will undoubtedly be just as successful as the last attempt, which is to say not at all.
Not like the athletics department has any money to pursue any sort of rebranding anyway.
Maybe they should have asked FTX to pay them the $17.5M in naming rights in cash upfront rather than in crypto (not even 2 months before FTX imploded)
I’d say that stung, but as a Cal fan I no longer feel pain.
Between all the clueless snobbery and the overly rigid “master plan” law that legally precludes CSU campuses from offering useful doctoral programs, I get a real cringe vibe from the UC system as a whole and Berkeley in particular.
The competing Texas systems have subtler differences in mission and THECB is often dumb but has a lot more flexibility to do right by the communities that the universities serve. Our most serious issues seem to flow from culture-war assholes in state government.
Outsiders looking in find it crazy that Texas has 6 different university systems, but as you point out it works pretty well now.
But it didn’t always. For example, from UT Arlington’s Wikipedia article:
Yeah, there are stupid, inefficient turf battles like A&M holding down UTA, or A&M acting like Tech shouldn’t have a vet school(!!!), or UH and UT fighting over that property in Houston, but it also means that the systems can grow. UTD and UTA mean there’s nobody thinking about a university in south Dallas? UNT can help with that. Tarleton State doesn’t need a ton of PhD programs, but they seem to have demand and expertise for one in criminal justice, so they have one. Same with SFA and forestry.
I heard they were flat broke and were leaning towards joining the A&M system so I just looked it up – I totally missed the news they joined the UT system this year. Glad they got to keep their name.
I think there was a law passed that you can’t change the name of universities named after “Texas heroes.” Lord knows we wouldn’t want to lose such luminous legacies as Sul Ross and Mirabeau Lamar.