BearSD said:
This may not be a solvable problem. Many of our sports fans want the football helmet logo attached to all aspects of the university; the faculty and administration want that associated with sports. The faculty and administration want Berkeley because the name has worldwide academic cachet; many sports fans and boosters would go ballistic if "Berkeley" was the name on the front of the football or basketball jerseys.
They are trying to make both camps happy with Berkeley branding for academics and Cal branding for athletics. See: https://brand.berkeley.edu/news/updated-brand-identity-launches
I'm OK with that approach. But having a "B" as the logo for the academics/research side doesn't make any sense. The prestige is attached with the spelled-out word "
Berkeley," not with the letter "B". "B" is associated with Boston, or Baltimore, or even Buffalo. Don't get cute, simply spell out the word.
The abbreviation "B" also serves to confound the academic side with a sports-like logo, bringing even more confusion where distinction & clarity are the targets. Be consistent in keeping the 2 spheres separate.
It's actually a desirable situation that most people don't associate embarrassing/below-average teams with our prestigious university. A clear & uniformly demarcated dual-branding approach is a feature, not a bug. And if some sports programs become consistently elite (such as our aquatics teams), everyone who even casually follows those sports will already know that Cal/California = sports at the Univ. of California, Berkeley.