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Avinash Kunnath: It's unclear how much money is being made on this deal to put the Bears in Santa Clara. You have to imagine the big reason it'd be more is all the big Berkeley alum will pony up for the luxury suites, offsetting the swathes of empty seats we'll probably see in general admission because unless there are drastic improvements, this team will not be very good. I'm hoping the end total is distinctively higher and not just "more than Memorial", because then it's not worth it.
I am glad that it's the Friday night game. I also think that Levi's could become a permanent site for our Thursday/Friday night game because of the headaches it causes the campus and the athletic department would dive into a muddy bogs to retrieve some dollar bills.
I wish it was used on the BYU game or a more even game like Colorado, but I understand why they chose Oregon--the Duck fans in the Bay will gladly buy a ticket and Cal fans are a little iffy on buying home tickets right now. I just hope that when this team returns to relevance, we pick good teams. It's a steep psychological price for a nationally televised browbeating.
TwistNHook: This combines two things I'm not really enthusiastic about into one, so that's a positive. The Friday night games are bad, because you can't really tailgate. The parking lots are still in school use mode. No tailgate? That's like 80% of the fun at Cal games these days!
It seems that Cal is focused on getting a game (or games) down at Levi's Stadium. Their thought process is that there are gold in them thar jeans. I suspect that the game will sell out, but it's unclear how much it'll help Cal. If this is anything like the Fresno State game at Candlestick Park, Cal needs to sell tickets through the official Cal channels to get any credit towards meeting its minimum ticket sales to earn the guarantee.
Valued reader MJB sent this link along.
Cal and Fresno State teamed up with two independent promoters to put on the game. Each school gets a revenue guarantee based on a predetermined allotment of tickets sold. The promoter keeps all the other operating revenue for the event.
To receive its guarantee of $1,050,000, Cal must sell tickets totaling a revenue of $637,500. Terwilliger said the school is still $175,000 short of meeting that goal.
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To meet the revenue requirements, only tickets sold through Cal's athletic ticket office count.
Cal's lagging sales prompted athletic director Sandy Barbour to send a mass email to supporters last week, imploring them not only to buy tickets but also to make sure they buy them through Cal.
Now, the deal may be structured differently for this one, so I don't know. But if it is anything like that, I'm not sure how much money Cal will make. I think that the game will sell out because of local curiosity coupled with Silicon Valley money. I dont see a substantial amount of Cal fans going down. How many of the South bay fans will buy through the Cal site? Very few, I suspect. 
Nam Le: I don't particularly like it, but as someone who was going to go to that game anyway, I guess I don't really have a choice but to accept it. Hopefully they manage to sell a good amount of the tickets so it's worth losing the home date. I also accept that morale around the program is going to be somewhat low and that Cal fans aren't exactly chomping at the bit to buy another ticket on top of their season tickets...but it is what it is.
Ruey Yen: This is clearly a much better alternative than to move a Big Game to Levi. While I don't see how the students and fans would be able to make this Friday (late afternoon?) game without playing hooky on that Friday, this is a clear source of income (7 digit payout?) and possible extra exposure (on TV if not in person) for the program. Since we may not be that competitive for that game anyhow, maybe this is not a big loss.
Leland Wong: I don't think it's completely blasphemous to do an off-campus game. Frankly, we need the money to pay for Memorial (and potentially any coaching changes), so if smart people like Ben Wyatt the accounting wizard have determined there is a worthwhile profit from hosting an occasional game off-site, you probably won't see me raging.
Nick Kranz: THIS IS JUST ANOTHER ICE TOWN WAITING TO HAPPEN.
