This previous era did not last very long.
I know, because I was there. When the #drop50 era rolled into the night 10 years ago when Deep Magic was written. When Evan Weaver proclaimed the Bears win by 4. When he took a bruised knee in a 30-7 loss at home to Washington in 2014. When Jared Goff had five interceptions in Salt Lake City, one by each team that was winning going into that game. When a 4-0 team lost in 2019 after Chase Garbers broke his collarbone.
Those good times, good fun, lasted a month at best, but those tweets had the same DNA that now propels us into the national consciousness: an air of irreverence and purity, the same spirit, if not on a different scale.
For those trying to understand what happened on Cal Twitter this week, it’s important to emphasize this: There has always been a group of die-hard fans of the Blue and Gold. In the modern era, the loudest voices for this faith have risen first from bloggers, whose stories have been told by those who experienced the best of the Jeff Tedford era, a generation that has seen firsthand how high Cal football could have reached, and who has lamented how much more it could have been if just one or two things had gone right.
I was not one of those lucky ones. When I arrived on campus, Tedford was already in the process of resigning, fans waiting for a comeback that never came. The greatest coach in modern history was fired after finishing his final seasons 5-7, 7-6, and 3-9, and his replacement promptly went 1-11. But it was in this late-Tedford, early-Sonny Dykes slump that the UC Twitter community first emerged. Before algorithms thrust us all into the limelight, we gathered in internet town squares, following recruiting announcements and dutifully recording play-by-plays of open practices (at least until the media relations reps stopped us). Names and faces were still few and far between, enough to recognize our peers at a glance. We celebrated milestones together, grew old together, talked politics and food and general life in the offseason, and mostly just talked to each other. We formed loose alliances with other Pac-12 communities. The Oregon wazoo found friends in the Arizona and Utah contingents. Some of Dykes’ staff, who hadn’t yet been told to stay off social media, would tweet with us from time to time, and so did the players, because Twitter was a brand new platform for all of us.
Even when it wasn’t much, UC Twitter was already there during the 60-59 win over Hill-Mary, the Cheez-It Bowl and both games against Texas, creating its own tropes and lore that we still recall every time the Bears are fortunate enough to score more than 50 points.
The scale is different, but the spirit is the same.
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Burners started appearing two years ago. Anonymity wasn’t new to our peers, but this wave was definitely the next generation. Most were in their early to mid-20s who weren’t part of the program’s rise but felt attached to it anyway. Some had grown up reading our work before WroteForCalifornia began, while others sprang from the program itself: former players and support staff who were looking to post more freely (i.e., freewheeling).
I’d like to lie and say this iteration of UC Twitter was born seamlessly, but honestly, it’s been contentious for quite some time. Until mid-2023, each game was simultaneously a result and a referendum. Groups old and new split into factions over their support or lack of support for Justin Wilcox, blaming each other every time the final whistle blew. When the Pac-12 officially disappeared, perhaps because of memes, we all decided to root for the Bears together. When our survival was no longer guaranteed. For anxious months, without a home or a future, we (the Burners) waited together for salvation. Finally, the ACC answered. With some of its members and the last boat from the G5. But we accepted it, and said goodbye to the West with cruel but fitting seriousness. A few months before January, again at the 50-yard line of the Rose Bowl.
I worried about who would continue to love the program after my generation retired, who would write it if we stopped, whether anyone would even follow us in the first place. UC football lost a significant number of contingent players in the mid-2010s, simply due to its incompetence. But the Berners answered that question. And as I wrote a few weeks ago, I have come to understand their passion, even if I don’t share their anonymity. In many ways, the love they hold is deeper than the generations before them. It is born from winning big games, but not from winning big games, and I know programs that rarely, or never, make the rankings. They didn’t even have the good old days to mourn.
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I tell you all this because I want you to know that this seemingly endless well of absurdity, this third iteration of UC Twitter, this calgorism that has captured the attention of the college football world this month, was not all immaculate conception. Tragicomedy and infinite heartache, one near miss after another, gallows punch line, six decades of collective hopes and disappointments inherited and imprinted in memory. That same spirit is now unfolding on a grand scale.
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The piece was supposed to be released on Wednesday, but we struggled to find an ending that felt “right,” especially for waiting readers. I’m not even sure we found the right ending in this version you’re reading now. Over the past month, Cal Twitter has erupted in unexpected ways, and people are starting to wonder if this season’s reorganization isn’t just a convention, but something cosmic.
Of course there is something in the joy we have cultivated in this new and wild frontier, but I find myself not only unable to make it through, but barely interested in it, because the truth is that these things don’t need to mean anything to mean anything.
Time goes on forever. We know it. We have told the story.