What is your least favorite thing about being a Cal fan and why?

Piotr Le: The worst is the realization that we can be so much more. The drive to be the best at everything is something that motivated me throughout my time as a Berkeley student. To see things go the wrong way and not living up to the potential that Cal athletics has is painful.

Another thing is the fact that so many students ignore the rich history of Cal athletics and never take the pilgrimage to Haas or Memorial. I resented the jibes my peers had against student-athletes, that somehow their status as athletes diminished their capacities as students. We are all Berkeley students for one reason or another, not worse nor better, but different.

Avinash Kunnath: I'd have to go with the regular rise in alcoholism when the months get super cold. Only beer can dull the pain of a rough Cal loss. And they just keep on piling up every year.

Piotr Le: So much liquor has been consumed in sadness. So much.

Nik Jam: hate to be cliche but what else? No Rose Bowls in even my father's lifetime, and in men's basketball we have a lengthy Sweet 16 drought. This would be more tolerable if (moreso in football but even recently in MBB) we have to painfully watch Stanford do these feats with ease. And there's little reason to think anything will change...

But, like my pro sports teams (Maybe next year, Sharks... :disappointed: ) that'll just make it more special if it does come... Which brings me back to the "most favorite" question.

boomtho: Probably how I let fandom affect my emotional state. I still stress out on gamedays, throw the remote at the couch at particularly vexing moments in the game, and need to rant to my friends after another inevitable tough loss. I need to get better about taking the good while letting the bad roll off!

Nick Kranz: Lots of things come to mind (how the fan base tears itself apart after bad losses, the moral compromises you have to make to be a college sports die-hard) but those things tend to be universal to college sports fandom. So what negative exactly is unique to Cal fandom? I'm occasionally annoyed when parts of campus are openly hostile towards athletics, but I also appreciate that campus won't bend over backwards for sports either. I occasionally get frustrated with tepid fan support, but also appreciate that Cal fans don't deify coaches (for the most part).

I do think Cal fandom does have one uniquely frustrating aspect, and Piotr started to hit on it. Cal is the flagship public school of the richest, most populous state in the union. Take a look at a list of flagship schools from other large states: Texas, Ohio State, Florida, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina. Every single one of those schools has tremendous success in football, basketball, or both. And yet Cal, over the last 55 years, has not. There are a myriad of reasons why Cal is a gigantic outlier in terms of college sports success that are probably worth a post of their own, but damn how sweet it would be if Cal's athletic success matched the potential geography and culture might allow.