BERKELEY — The cameras stopped rolling at nine o’clock exactly — showtime demands the strictest of punctuality — but Rece Davis and Pat McAfee still had more to say to the thousands in attendance at Memorial Glade once the world stopped watching.
So much had already been said over the course of ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast on Saturday morning, the first time Cal hosted the spectacle in the show’s 37-year history. There were cheers. There were boos. There were chants of “Roll on you Bears” and Marshawn Lynch yelling, “Show love to the home team!” There were demands for Stanford Steve to remove his crimson zip-up and there was the catharsis of a sophomore nailing a kick for $100,000. The marijuana was loud, too.
And there were signs. So many beautiful, boisterous, brilliant signs.
But at the conclusion of the three-hour broadcast, the official end to a 12-plus hour marathon that truly began around midnight, yes, Davis and McAfee had more to say. There were still flowers to distribute.
“I’ve been doing this show for a decade, and people ask me all the time, ‘Where’s the best place to go?’” Davis said. “And after today, I’m going to tell them the best place is where the whole damn world is in Bear Territory.”
“I know you guys have midterms right now,” McAfee said. “I know you’re going to change the world. I know you have big brains. But this morning, you kicked [bleeping] [butt] for us.”
A year ago, the Bears found themselves without a conference, its football future in question. On Saturday, their fanbase showed the whole damn college football world that no one can question their love of the game. Cal’s fanbase didn’t just show up; it showed out.
Of all the morning’s memorable moments — of which there were many — the one that generated the loudest roar came from Daniel Villasenor, a sophomore civil engineering major who nailed a 33-yard uphill field goal to walk away with $100,000 for himself and $600,000 for hurricane relief.
A graduate of Livermore High School with a soccer background, Villasenor had only attempted a handful of short field goals in his life. Even with his leg, a 33-yard attempt was new territory. Villasenor missed his first attempt wide right, but McAfee gave the sophomore a shot at redemption, upping the stakes from $75,000 to $100,000. With no sleep and only a donut for sustinence, Villasenor didn’t miss twice.
“As soon as I saw it might have the chance of going in, I went crazy. I was so happy,” Villasenor said. “Over the moon, really. No words.”
Villasenor was one of many students in attendance, the life force of the event whose energy wavered despite collective sleep deprivation. If anything, there may have been too much energy. Around midnight, a large group of students broke down the barriers around midnight and began entering The Pit well before 3:30 a.m., the designated time for fans to enter the area. Initial rowdiness aside, GameDay went on without a hitch.
“We were in the front of the line and everybody pushed through the gate,” said junior Veda Kalwala, who got a spot in the front of The Pit.
“Everyone in front of me fell, then I fell, then 20 guys fell on top of me on the concrete,” said fellow junior Jia Jia Kelty, who attended GameDay with Kalwala. “I thought I was going to die, but I made it!”
For all the active students in attendance, there was no shortage of alumni who made the trip to Berkeley specifically to experience College GameDay at Cal for the first time. Among those was Nick Desler, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2021.
A self-described college football junkie, Desler can recite every word from the ESPN broadcast of DeSean Jackson’s famous punt return against Tennessee. When Cal was picked for College GameDay, he didn’t hesitate to fly in from Austin.
“It was a no-brainer,” Desler said. “There was no way I was going to miss this.”
There was also James and Chris Halliwell, a pair of brothers who drove to Berkeley from Reno. While James and Chris were adorned themselves in Cal paraphernalia, neither of them actually attended the school, both having graduated from the University of Nevada (Reno). Their family, though, was unmistakably a Cal family.
“We bleed blue and gold,” Chris Halliwell said.
It wasn’t just the students’ ability to shout and shout and shout some more well before the break of day, though their vocal stamina was certainly impressive. It was in their collective sign game, too, one that embraced the same self-aware, self-deprecating humor that made the Calgorithm a national sensation.
You people are blocking the library.
One strong candidate for best — if not most obscure — sign of the morning is one that read, “The Adams-Onís Treaty was a mistake,” an agreement between Spain and the United States that ceded Florida to America. Unsurprisingly, the sign resulted in a flurry of Google searches.
Desler, for his part, crafted a wildly popular sign that read, “If you or a loved one attended the 2018 Cal vs TCU Cheez-It Bowl, you may be entitled to financial compensation.”
The GameDay experience at Cal, of course, would not have been complete without the presence of Lynch who, as he is wont to do, found his way to a golf cart. No one questions the strength of Lynch’s unwavering relationship to his alma mater, and no one was surprised when he picked Cal during the prediction section. McAfee, though, was more skeptical.
Everything in McAfee’s football brain told him to pick No. 8 Miami. On this historic Saturday in Berkeley, he went with his football heart.
“I don’t care!” McAfee said. “You know it!”
What!
“You tell the story!”
What!
“You tell the whole damn world this is Bear territory! I’m caught up in it! I’m caught up in the Berkeley hype!”
Following those three, magical hours on Memorial Glade, the entire college football world might be caught up in the hype, too.