philly1121 said:
MTbear22 said:
maxer said:
Econ141 said:
This is a good thread to read through. I had no idea the level of hate the regular Joe Schmoe has for Berkeley.
Not sure I'd describe it as "good".
I'm not going to read it, but someone has to explain to me why so many people dislike Cal beyond an answer that essentially boils down to "'cuz they LIBRUHL!"
These two twitter responses pretty much sum it up:
Quote:
Nobody feels that way about Virginia, Michigan, Texas, UCLA, UNC, GA Tech, or any of the other great public universities. There is a price to pay for elitism, self-righteousness, and dysfunction. If you're going to sit on a gilded throne, you'd better have your house in order.
and
Quote:
Also Cal and the way they behaved in the wake of UCLA leaving for the B1G turned off a lot of people.
the rest is "they're commies" and "they'll still have their protests" type comments.
Not a Cal fan or affiliated with UC Berkeley in any way, but just wanted to provide some outside insight on this since Twitter is pretty unhinged from reality.
I would say that people absolutely view Michigan, Texas, UNC, etc. as extremely elitist as well. Texas especially has a strong argument for the most hated team in college football largely due to their perceived arrogance. I think a key difference that both causes college football fans to care less about Cal and yet have more contempt for them is the degree to which that arrogance is seen as earned or deserved. UC Berkeley is one of the best academic institutions in the world, no doubt. And most everyone knows it's a great school. The thing is though, it also exists in a world outside the one that the vast majority of people are in. Unless you are in a position where you were seriously considering and applying to top 20-30 universities, which most people are not, you don't know how elite some of these institutions are. You know they're good schools, but there's a lot of good schools out there. And in the eyes of the college football fanbase, many of whom didn't attend university at all, a school like Texas is a great school too, but it also has one of the most storied college football programs of all time, an athletic program absolutely swimming in cash, insane program support, and a seat with the big boys now and forever. Texas is elitist and self-righteous, and they have every single right to be as smug as they want about it because they'll never find themselves outside the club. For the large contingent of the college football fanbase for whom a university's name conjures up images of its football teams before its lecture halls, Cal is seen as having a similar attitude towards programs they perceive as below them as a Michigan or Texas without the same high ground to look down on others from -- hating from outside a club they likely won't get into.
As for the politics, I think a lot of college football fans forget that the teams they cheer for are attached to some of the largest research universities in the country, most of which are going to be left-leaning and hold some values that these fans wouldn't agree with. Interestingly, I think that the Cal Athletics vs. UC Berkeley dichotomy almost makes it more difficult for cfb fans to separate the two. Berkeley is undoubtedly a bigger brand than Cal, and branding the athletics differently than the academics just makes Cal athletics feel more inaccessible and doesn't allow Cal to leverage its academic brand to market its athletics to a broader audience to change the perception of Berkeley in some circles. A college football viewer can call themselves a Michigan fan and have Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan call to mind images of gridiron glory rather than the origins of Weather Underground, which paints the institution in a more sympathetic light to those unaffiliated. Ann Arbor is honestly Berkeley adjacent in many ways, yet because of the visibility of the football team that goes by the same namesake as the overall university, it's not something that is as talked about in college football circles.