Cal students signal boiling hatred for UCLA as rivalry is renewed

BERKELEY — Going their separate ways in the college sports landscape hasn’t eased any tensions between Cal and sister school UCLA.All one had to do to feel the lingering animosity Saturday was stroll down Piedmont Avenue, just a Hail Mary away from the Golden Bears’ beloved Memorial Stadium.The signs hanging from the fraternity and sorority houses said it all.“WTF is a Bruin” read one.“F–k U(CLA)” read another.“Taking a No.2,” stated a third, with UCLA written inside a steaming pile of poop.Yep, it’s fair to say that the rivalry is alive and well.The Bruins may have left the Golden Bears behind in the Pac-12 on their way to the Big Ten, forcing Cal to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, but they will always be that little school down south to students from the school that started the University of California system.“You know, they thought they could run from us by leaving the Pac-12,” Cal senior Zoe Eastham said, “but here we are, so we want blood today.”The 95th meeting between Cal and the school once known as the “Southern Branch” was the renewal of a rivalry and a new beginning.

It was the debut for UCLA coach Bob Chesney and Cal counterpart Tosh Lupoi at their respective schools, as well as a nonconference game between teams that had not met since 2023.“You know what, UCLA screwed us a couple of years ago,” Cal student Andre Risz said, “so this is our get-back — we are going to kill UCLA today.We’ll show them who No.

2 is.”Among other things, the schools have long jockeyed for the title of best public university in the United States, with various publications crowning either school in any given year.While U.S.

News & World Report listed Cal above UCLA in its most recent rankings, the education research platform Niche crowned the Bruins as No.1.“I think it’s pretty clear who No.

2 is,” Risz said.“They’re our little brother, we created them, they know that, they’re just sad about it.”The fraterni...