This story aired in the January 15, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Francisco Mendoza is the star quarterback for the Indiana University Hoosiers. He just won the Heisman trophy, which goes to the top college football player each year… and he’s led his team to the National College Football Championship. That game, between Indiana and the Miami Hurricanes, takes place on Monday, January 19th.
And in an alternate universe… Cal could have been at that game. Mendoza had been Cal’s star quarterback before transferring to Indiana University, for a better shot at a successful football career.
And that’s because UC Berkeley has historically had a pretty mediocre football team. But despite its record, there's one group of unlikely—and very online—supporters who’ve got the team’s back.
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Story Transcript:
Sound of bell tower.
REPORTER: It’s an hour to kickoff at the Cal football game in Berkeley. They’re about to play University of Virginia, and the tailgate parties are in full swing. Everyone is decked out in blue and gold. On one end, there’s kids in a bouncehouse. On the other, there’s big screens showing other college games. Even the marching band shows up.
Sound of marching band.
And smack in the middle is a tent with one very particular group of tailgaters called the Calgorithm.
Sound of people at a tailgate party opening beers.
You can’t miss one of their longtime members, Nick Kranz. He’s wearing all gold and is about to lead the Calgorithm tailgate in their traditional fight song.
Sound of tailgaters singing their fight song.
From the outside, the Calgorithm might look like your average football fans, but don’t be fooled. These aren’t your typical jocks.
If you look close enough, you’ll see their giant yellow tailgate flag printed with the words THE PEOPLE’S PROGRAM—an adopted motto and nod to what they call their "woke socialist humor.”This is Cal football’s most passionate and perhaps unlikely fandom.
NICK KRANZ: More specifically it's a very online movement intended to spread the reach and engagement of Cal fans locally and worldwide.
REPORTER: They’re basically a bunch of nerds who use the internet to share self-aware memes and sharp commentary to hype up Cal football.
KRANZ: Show you my personal favorite.
REPORTER: Okay.
KRANZ: Which is a relatively new one.
REPORTER: Nick’s shuffling through a bag of meme stickers some of the group just printed.
KRANZ: It's Oski photoshopped as Karl Marx,
REPORTER: Oski, Cal’s Golden Bear mascot, is wearing his trademark frumpy-collegiate cardigan. He’s got what can only be described as the dopiest smile I’ve ever seen photoshopped onto Marx’s bushy beard.
KRANZ: And it says “From the Calgorithm, according to their ability, for California according to its need.”
REPORTER: If there’s one thing the Calgorithm loves, it’s Cal football. But if there’s two things, it’s a Cal football socialism joke.
Nick doesn’t make memes himself, but he’s been involved with the Cal online community since he graduated from the university in 2007. But his love for Cal football goes way back.
KRANZ: I have attended every big game since I was nine years old, so I was kind of raised into it, you know, I am indoctrinated into the cult early, so to speak.
REPORTER: Nick started writing for a Cal football blog a few years after he graduated. That site became a hub for fans who liked to talk shop and trade in niche jokes. That community would eventually become the Calgorithm, but back then they were just out to celebrate, commiserate, and make memes about their beloved Bears online—whose record typically sits at about 6 and 6.
KRANZ: If you're gonna watch a team that perpetually wins and loses exactly as many games as they play, like you gotta make your own fun. And Cal fans decided we're gonna make our own fun.
REPORTER: But then, in 2024, the college football world experienced a major shake-up and overnight the stakes changed for Cal football. And with it, the Calgorithm found their true mission. Here’s what you need to know.
Sound of marching band drum solo.
College football teams are divided up into conferences that determine who plays who. For the most part, they used to be based on geography. For over a hundred years Cal was in a conference with 12 other teams on the Pacific Coast, called the PAC 12.
Sound of TV announcer.
But that all changed when two of the top teams—USC and UCLA—left that conference to join a bigger and more profitable conference, fittingly named the Big 10. That’s because now, conferences are less about geography and more about how much money teams can bring in from TV sports networks.
After this, the PAC 12 disbanded and Cal was left scrambling for a new conference home. They weren’t marketable enough to secure a deal in the Big 10, but eventually landed in the Atlantic Coast Conference, an east coast conference, better known as the ACC. Here’s Nick again.
KRANZ: That was a bad thing for Cal football, both for travel purposes, like it's harder on the team, it's less fun for fans because we're not playing teams that are our rivals.
REPORTER: And they’re making less money on TV deals… money that could go towards attracting other players, or funding other sports programs. This shake-up really spooked Nick and the other Cal fans. And they wanted to do something about it.
KRANZ: The goal right now for Cal football is to be successful enough on the field that we are attractive to be in a better conference whenever an opportunity comes along.
REPORTER: They couldn’t make Cal play better on the field, but they could make their team more attractive to media outlets if another conference shakeup ever occurred.
KRANZ: And who knows if that'll be in two years, five years, 10 years? We don't really know.
REPORTER: So what makes an attractive team? Buzz. Like, how big your fan base is, how many people watch your games—but also, how people are talking about you online. And talking online? It’s kinda what the Calgorithum does best.
KRANZ: For some it's goofy photoshops. For others, it's, you know, It might be, you know, making a song parody.
REPORTER: Like the song parody “Ott to Go,” a riff on the Chappell Roan song. It’s about former Cal running back, Jaydn Ott.
JOSE SANCHEZ: Ott. Ott to go. Jaydn Ott is Ott to go.
Sound of “Ott to Go” song.
REPORTER: So, as all of this conference stuff was going down, the Calgorithm got to work. They amped up on memes that played off stereotypes of Berkeley as a liberal bastion of socialists and snowflakes. It’s at this point when the name Calgorithm was coined on Twitter. Just about everyone I spoke to at the tailgate could point to the one meme that started it all.
MILES GOODMAN: You just lost to the woke agenda.
CALLIE WAKE: You just lost the woke agenda.
KRANZ: You just lost to the woke agenda.
REPORTER: The meme features two former Cal players overlaid with a rainbow, Kamala Harris, and a smush-faced Joe Biden sitting atop Oskie’s head like a toupee. It might sound stupid, but that’s kinda the whole point. To make fun of a place like Berkeley, that isn’t supposed to care about football. But the thing is, they really care, and they want you to care, too.
That Tweet got sixty-three thousand likes and five point three million engagements. And the memes went viral—so viral that they got the attention of ESPN, who decided to host its coveted Game Day—a live pre-game broadcast—at Berkeley last year.
Sound of ESPN broadcasters announcing Game Day at Berkeley.
The hashtag Calgorithm took off. And since then, they’ve published countless memes and gained new fans. They even wrote a book.
Sound of a football crowd chanting “defense!”
When I finally catch up to Nick and the Calgorithm crew at the game, the Bears are already down ten-0. It’s been a tough couple years—or even decade—to be a Cal fan. However, Nick and the rest of the Calgorithm are hopeful, insisting that it’s still early in the first quarter.
Sound of the crowd cheering.
And with their first touchdown, Cal’s back in the game—for now.
Sound of the marching band playing.
For the Calgorithm, while it is still definitely about winning, it’s more than that. What they’ve created in their quest to shine a light on Cal football is special. It’s a positive, welcoming culture within a broader football community that’s often described as broy-y or gatekeepy. When I asked Nick why he cares about all this so much—like why he and the Calgorithm devote so much of their energy to building this community—he laughed.
KRANZ: I mean, it's probably a psychosis quite frankly. It probably shouldn't matter. But you know, when I was nine years old, I went to the big game and I watched Cal Win and I saw, you know, 60,000 people go nuts and party in the streets. And I decided that was great and I wanted more of that. And I would like more of that in the future if I can.
