Cal Sports Report

BART Will Run Early Trains Saturday Morning for GameDay at Cal

If you host it, they will come. But will fans really come for a show that begins in the dark at 6 a.m. on the Cal campus?

Jake Curtis

The ESPN GameDay panel at Columbia, South Carolina, on September 14.
The ESPN GameDay panel at Columbia, South Carolina, on September 14. / Ken Ruinard / staff / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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It’s a big deal that Cal is hosting ESPN’s GameDay for the first time ever, but now the question is this: Will people show up to be part of a telecast that begins at 6 a.m. on Saturday, when it’s still dark?

Rece Davis, the host of GameDay, would certainly like there to be lots of people yelling and screaming in the background of their panel of college football experts, so he issued a challenge on twitter.

BART apparently is expecting demand for early-morning travel to Berkeley on Saturday, so BART, despite its financial woes, will be providing trains that will get to Cal an hour before the show is scheduled to begin at Memorial Glade in the heart of the Cal campus.

BART officials announced this week that it will provide trains that will get to the Downtown Berkeley station by 5 a.m., and that is about an hour before BART service typically begins on Saturdays.

SFGATE reported that BART spokesman Alicia Trost issued a statement that noted at the end that #Calgorithm’s clever pleading through Twitter is the reason GameDay is coming to Berkeley.

Here is Trost's statement to SFGATE:

“The moment we heard College Gameday was coming to Cal we knew this would be a great opportunity to increase ridership and show the region we are serious about being responsive to changing travel patterns and prioritizing trips to fun destinations. BART has a co-marketing agreement with Cal Athletics and they have been tremendous partners in prioritizing transit and reducing traffic. While logistically it is a challenge to open early, this was an easy decision and a great way to connect with new riders. 

“The calgorithm posted College Gameday into existence, the least we could do is run early morning service.”

Former Cal quarterback Aaron Rodgers is on board, noting his excitement during Tuesday’s Pat McAfee Show:

Rodgers won’t attend because his New York Jets have a game in London the next day.

Cal’s Saturday night home game against eighth-ranked Miami will begin at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN and will end in the dark, and the morning GameDay college football pregame show at Cal will begin in the dark.

The GameDay program targets an East Coast audience. That is why the program will run from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Pacific time, which is a more enjoyable 9 a.m. to noon window on the East Coast.

Whether the folks that attend GameDay at Cal will hang around for the 10½ hours between the end of GameDay and the start of the Bears’ game against the Hurricanes is another question.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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