I Will Solve the Calimony Question

The most pressing issue of our time requires bold thinking, and I am here to provide it.

The picture of Zach Charbonnet running over a Cal Berkeley defender is completely unrelated I promise. (Photo credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports via uclabruins.com)

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Hello, distinguished reader. I have no doubt you clicked on this article because you, a person of stunning intellect and exquisite taste in fashion and dining, no doubt still find yourself questioning a specific aspect of UCLA’s impending transition into the Big Ten Conference. One word in particular stands out among the others, a word that vexes and causes you to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

Calimony.

But fear not, brave reader. I have taken upon myself the unenviable task of not only explaining the concept of Calimony but also creating a solution to this problem that would be satisfactory to all parties involved. This is hard work, but then again, that’s why they pay me nothing while some politician in Sacramento will inevitably steal this and call it their own (though Martin Jarmond, since I know you’re definitely reading this if you want to talk about my brilliant scheme here, feel free to call!).

Let’s start with a basic explanation of what Calimony is. The concept of Calimony came about in the aftermath of the UC Regent meetings regarding UCLA’s move to the Big Ten. A good handful of the regents were against the move, concerned with how this would affect UC Berkeley I’m sorry, we have to call them Cal Berkeley now. Anyway, these regents recognized that with the departure of UCLA and Southern Cal to the Big Ten, the value of any Pac-12 media rights deal would suddenly be much lower, and so they wanted to do something to guarantee Cal Berkeley’s continued existence in major collegiate athletics. And so, when it became clear that the regents would not be blocking UCLA’s departure, they instead put in a clause that has been referred to as Calimony.

The basic idea of Calimony is simple. The regents proposed that UCLA would kick a portion of their new media deal over to Cal Berkeley to help cover any gaps in funding the two schools will now see. According to the regents, this payment can range anywhere from $2 million to a max of $10 million. It should be noted here that this idea of Calimony was never officially agreed to, but is considered by all parties to be something that will ultimately take place, though the amount is up for debate (of course, our biggest reporting states that Calimony will 100% happen comes from Jon Wilner, who spent the entirety of this realignment saga revealing himself to be a credulous buffoon in the pockets of Cal Berkeley supporters. It has been the wildest time to watch Jason Scheer of all people routinely clown him with better reporting).

As an aside, reporting in the aftermath of the Pac-12’s collapse has stated that the UC Regents crunched the numbers on what UCLA would gain in revenue from their Big Ten move and ended up at $52 million annually. They subsequently went to George Kliavkoff and said that if he could guarantee UCLA would make that amount in the next media rights deal, they would block the move and keep the Bruins in the Pac-12. Now, we also know that ESPN apparently presented a deal to the conference that would have set the mark at $30 million per school, with further negotiations likely bumping the number up to the $35 million range (the conference killed that deal when one president brought in a professor at his school that stated the conference media deal was worth closer to $50 million, which is still bonkers to think about). If the conference had taken that deal, it would have necessitated the various members of the conference, including Cal Berkeley, taking less money in order to get UCLA to that $52 million mark. No word exists on how the UC Regents will deal with the irony of this Calimony scheme existing after they had tried to gimp Cal Berkeley on their own in order to keep UCLA in the Pac-12.

Now, fast forward a bit from last December to these past few weeks. In the aftermath of the Pac-12’s disintegration, Cal Berkeley joined with Stanford and SMU to join with the ACC. As I will continually have to do here, it should be noted that Cal Berkeley was reported to be completely unprepared for the Pac-12’s demise and Stanford did all of the heavy lifting to get both schools into a conference based on the other side of the country. As part of the move to the ACC, both Stanford and Cal Berkeley agreed to take a reduced distribution for the first seven years of their new conference membership, estimated by Stewart Mandel of the Athletic to equal around $20 million per year, about $12-15 million below that of other ACC members. The ACC is also changing up its revenue model starting in 2024-2025 to a success-based one for any extra payouts such as bowl payouts, which I’m sure won’t negatively affect Cal Berkeley at all. According to Jon Wilner, Cal Berkeley administrators are fine with this arrangement because they assume Calimony will cover the difference.

You may be wondering how this concept of Calimony would be considered fair. After all, it does seem like Cal Berkeley shares plenty of blame for their current predicament. And you would be correct! At no point in this entire run of conference realignment has any administrator tied to Cal Berkeley shown any real understanding of what is happening in modern college athletics. If they did, they probably would have pushed harder for an initial Big Ten invite when UCLA and Southern Cal made their announcement rather than ride with a dying conference. They also would have recognized the true worth of the conference and pushed the other Pac-12 members into accepting the $30+ million a year offer from ESPN when it was made. You may be thinking to yourself “gee, turning down $30+ million a year in order to make only $20+ million while also vastly increasing your travel costs doesn’t seem like sound financial planning”, and you would be correct!

But this is not a recency problem. This is a Cal Berkeley problem, because for the better part of the last half-century Cal Berkeley has seemingly made every bad decision possible and tarnished their athletics brand in the process. Don’t take my word for it: here’s a report from Cal Berkeley itself showcasing their problem.

These are the national numbers and just look at that top line. As much as Cal Berkeley fans want you to refer to them as Cal or California, it is exceedingly clear that the vast majority of the country does not recognize them as a brand worth monitoring. And again from a later question:

5% of national respondees across the board recognize Cal Berkeley for its athletics. In almost all of their naming questions, more people had not heard of the school at all than think of it from an academic prestige standpoint. That speaks to an incredible failure of leadership spanning decades and is something that the UC Regents should be made to stare at for at least a week the next time they question why no major conference or TV network wanted to pay millions of dollars for Cal Berkeley athletics. Throw in the hundreds of millions of dollars of debt the university has racked up despite never showing an ability to make money, and you end up in the current situation where Cal Berkeley is crying to everyone that will listen that UCLA is being mean to them and owes them.

But……all that said, I do think UCLA should pay some form of Calimony to Cal Berkeley. Maybe this is the big brother in me, but I know that the job of the big brother is to take care of their little brothers whenever things are going bad for them, and that’s what UCLA should do in this situation. It is the moral and right thing for UCLA to take care of their little brother in their time of need.

And let’s get one thing straight: if Cal Berkeley were to accept Calimony, they would 100% be the little brother forever. There is no possible way of spinning the fact that you are so bad at both athletics and finances that another school has to bail you out.

Now, I don’t think Cal Berkeley should get Calimony with no strings attached. That would not be fair to UCLA, which has routinely shown why they are the #1 public school in the country by being proactive through this entire process instead of sitting around with a stunned look on their faces. Thus, I have come up with a proposal that should be satisfactory for everyone involved. It looks like the following:

• The Calimony amount is set at $5 million annually. This amount best takes into account the various actions of all parties involved, thus providing Cal Berkeley with extra money to supplement their athletic department while not punishing UCLA too severely for the crime of being A Desirable Brand in athletics.

• As part of this deal, UCLA and Cal Berkeley will continue their athletic rivalry across a wide variety of sports, scheduling non-conference games in major sports like football, basketball (men’s and women’s), softball, baseball, and gymnastics. This would require both schools to potentially break contracts with other schools in order to accommodate this shift in the near future, but I’m sure both schools can find ways to make this work.

• These games would all be hosted by UCLA. This is what we in the business refer to as a buy game.

• If Cal Berkeley decides they want to host the game, this can be arranged, but it would lead to a deduction in the Calimony payment for that year based on the sport in question. For example, if Cal Berkeley wants to host a football game in a particular year, it would drop the Calimony payment by $1 million. This would be done because Cal Berkeley would be making increased revenue by hosting the game by bringing in a recognizable sports brand to their run-down venues.

• Finally, should a player decide they want to transfer out of Cal Berkeley, the university will encourage those student-athletes to transfer to UCLA if the Bruins agree to take them. This would keep student-athletes in the UC system and protect them from lesser educational programs like Southern Cal.

I think this arrangement would be fair and equitable for all involved. In fact, I think it is such a good idea, that I encourage everyone to share this far and wide. Feel free to tag all of your Cal Berkeley friends, I’m sure they would agree with everything that is written here and would send letters to the UC Regents urging them to take this course of action.

Go Bruins!

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