Some of you may remember that last year at the beginning of the season California Legends, with the assistance of this community and a few generous donors, placed our "Thank Y'all for the Invitation" billboards in various ACC markets around the country. These then morphed into billboards posting the score of the Cal/Auburn game after our victory down south, at which point any pretense that this was a professional ad campaign probably evaporated.
Last year's billboards took over six months for me to organize and required probably 1,000 calls and emails to pull together. It was only after I posted an open plea on Bear Insider that we discovered that there were people in our community who not only worked in the billboard industry but were willing to roll up their sleeves and help. Who knew? All I can say we never would have pulled this off without them.
Well, I'm delighted to let you know that our billboard campaign is back and better than ever. This year a group of us are undertaking the mission to help market Cal to its most logical customers; namely, those who live in the east bay and are looking for a new team to follow now that both the A's and the Raiders have flown the coop.
Starting on Monday (and for the next month) we will have giant billboards in front of the Oakland Coliseum and at the Oakland airport with the following text and image. I'll admit I laugh every time I look at it:
Would appreciate it if someone could drive by and post a picture once these go live. Would love to see our billboards in action.
In terms of how this came about, here I'd like to give a shoutout to SBGold, who I believe was the first person to suggest this tagline back in October (and I apologize if someone threw it out there earlier and I missed it). I then created an image I thought would best capture this idea, solicited a few donors who generously agreed to fund this and presented the entire package to Cal. So if your name happens to be John Fisher and this campaign annoys you, I would like to clarify that this is 100% donor-created and funded and the University of California, Berkeley bears no responsibility for the observation that you are pulling a reverse Moses by fleeing the land of milk and honey to move to the desert.
Also, thanks as always to our man BearCam, who negotiated this deal with OutFront and without whom we never would have pulled off last year's campaign, much less this one. And again, special thank you to the three other donors who joined me in paying for all this.
Hopefully this will help continue the re-branding of Cal as a fun school as opposed to a sonorous academic monolith. And, more importantly, hopefully it will help get some east bay residents who may be missing the chance to watch big time sports live to head over to Berkeley this fall. Come on down! We'd love to welcome you to the site of The Play and the home of The Axe. All Raiders and A's refugees welcome!
Go Bears!
Last year's billboards took over six months for me to organize and required probably 1,000 calls and emails to pull together. It was only after I posted an open plea on Bear Insider that we discovered that there were people in our community who not only worked in the billboard industry but were willing to roll up their sleeves and help. Who knew? All I can say we never would have pulled this off without them.
Well, I'm delighted to let you know that our billboard campaign is back and better than ever. This year a group of us are undertaking the mission to help market Cal to its most logical customers; namely, those who live in the east bay and are looking for a new team to follow now that both the A's and the Raiders have flown the coop.
Starting on Monday (and for the next month) we will have giant billboards in front of the Oakland Coliseum and at the Oakland airport with the following text and image. I'll admit I laugh every time I look at it:
A's & Raider Fans You Still Have a Home.
— California Legends (@ca_legends_) August 2, 2025
See Our Billboards @ The Coliseum & OAK Airport Starting 8/4/25.#GoBears pic.twitter.com/aBPUhoxYCL
Would appreciate it if someone could drive by and post a picture once these go live. Would love to see our billboards in action.
In terms of how this came about, here I'd like to give a shoutout to SBGold, who I believe was the first person to suggest this tagline back in October (and I apologize if someone threw it out there earlier and I missed it). I then created an image I thought would best capture this idea, solicited a few donors who generously agreed to fund this and presented the entire package to Cal. So if your name happens to be John Fisher and this campaign annoys you, I would like to clarify that this is 100% donor-created and funded and the University of California, Berkeley bears no responsibility for the observation that you are pulling a reverse Moses by fleeing the land of milk and honey to move to the desert.
Also, thanks as always to our man BearCam, who negotiated this deal with OutFront and without whom we never would have pulled off last year's campaign, much less this one. And again, special thank you to the three other donors who joined me in paying for all this.
Hopefully this will help continue the re-branding of Cal as a fun school as opposed to a sonorous academic monolith. And, more importantly, hopefully it will help get some east bay residents who may be missing the chance to watch big time sports live to head over to Berkeley this fall. Come on down! We'd love to welcome you to the site of The Play and the home of The Axe. All Raiders and A's refugees welcome!
Go Bears!
