What is 'Calimony'? Why UCLA owes Cal $10 million annually after Big Ten move
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In a surprisingly barren Week 1 slate for the 2026 college football season, UCLA’s game at California stands out.
The Bruins and Golden Bears enter the season as two of the more intriguing teams in the country. After going 8-16 the past two seasons, UCLA made one of the more inspired hires of the 2025 cycle by bringing in coach Bob Chesney, who had just led James Madison to the College Football Playoff and who has won big at every level of the sport in which he has coached.
Cal, meanwhile, brought in a new coach of its own, former Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi, who managed to hold on to sophomore phenom quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele and paired him with one of the best transfer classes in the sport.
For two programs that head into the season with some justifiable optimism, the result of the game will be validation for one team and sobering reality check for the other.
The connection between the two programs goes well beyond an enticing, season-opening matchup. Both schools are part of the University of California system and for nearly 100 years, they shared a conference in the Pac-12.
Even though they’re now apart, with the Bruins in the Big Ten and the Golden Bears in the ACC, there’s still one notable thing binding them.
What is Calimony?
When UCLA left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024 as part of a broader move with USC, Oregon and Washington, it wasn’t able to do so cheaply.
In May 2024, the board of regents for the University of California system — which encompasses UCLA and Cal, among other schools — ruled that UCLA would have to transfer $10 million annually to Cal’s athletic department for the next three academic years.
In 2022, several months after news first broke that UCLA and USC would be leaving for the Big Ten, the UC board of regents had discussed potentially overturning the Bruins’ move away from the Pac-12, noting the financial harm it would do to Cal’s athletic department once two of the conference’s biggest brands left (USC, a private school, doesn’t fall under the UC system’s purview).
The board ultimately approved the move, but did so on the condition that UCLA make an annual payment to Cal. It didn’t take long for the financial arrangement to earn a fitting nickname: “Calimony.”
It was initially proposed that the payments go for six years, through the 2029-30 academic year, but board members voted to make it three years, under the condition they revisit the issue at the end of that stretch.
The payments will make up for some of the financial shortcomings that Cal has endured since the Pac-12 dissolved. During the 2024 fiscal year, their first in the ACC, the Golden Bears received a $22.99 million payout from the conference, according to the conference’s tax filing. As part of its agreement to join the league, Cal will receive only a 30% share of the ACC’s Tier 1 media revenue for its first seven years in the conference. UCLA, meanwhile, brought in $76.01 million in its first season in the Big Ten. Conference payouts are tied largely to the money a league receives from its media-rights deals, which helps explain the massive disparity between the Big Ten and ACC.
In their final year in the Pac-12, Cal earned $30.21 million while UCLA received $30.19 million.
UCLA-Cal football series
Saturday’s game between UCLA and Cal will mark the first meeting between the programs since 2023, with the Bruins now in the Big Ten and the Golden Bears in the ACC.
It’s the first of a four-game series between the programs from 2026-29, with two at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California and two at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California.
- Sept. 5, 2026: UCLA at Cal
- Sept. 4, 2027: Cal at UCLA
- Sept. 2, 2028: UCLA at Cal
- Sept. 15, 2029: Cal at UCLA
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is 'Calimony'? Why UCLA owes Cal $10 million annually after Big Ten move
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