BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. – Cal’s first ACC home game is Saturday night when they take on the #8 Miami Hurricanes.

UC Berkeley hosted ESPN College Game Day for the first time Saturday morning. They came to Berkeley in droves for the first-ever national pregame show.

“It’s game day, baby!” said Karan Vazirani, who is not a Cal student but traveled from San Jose to enjoy the pregame excitement.

From current students to alumni, generations of Golden Bears gathered before Saturday night’s game against Miami.

“Oh, we’ll give it our all,” said one Cal student. “It’s going to be crazy. I’ll be at the game, although I should probably look for a job.”

Many of them arrived 24 hours before the 6 a.m. pregame show and set up tents to beat the crowd. A sea of ​​Berkeley blue and California gold, including everything from a Cal-A-style Lucha Libre outfit to a full-blown banana costume.

Freshman Clare Antonow stood in line at midnight and waited hours for a good spot at the pregame show.

“I didn’t drink any water. “I didn’t sleep,” Antonov said as another student quickly handed her a bottle of water. “Oh my God! I have water!”

It is a great honor for the national broadcaster to come to Berkeley for the first time in 38 seasons.

“There were three or four times in the 2000s when we thought game day was coming and I was so excited about it and then for one reason or another it didn’t happen, so it was the fact that it was this one Year came “kind of crazy,” said alumnus Gary Lentz.

“In my time, back at Aaron Rodgers, Marshawn Lynch,” said another alumni member, Juan Contreras. “I was on campus when Aaron was here. There is so much talent emerging from our campus.”

Alumni member Pepe Davis stopped by in his 1954 Ford Thunderbird to cheer up the team.

“That’s the Cal car!” Davis said. “There is no one comparable. So I had it for over 30 years and I proposed to my wife in that car at a big game.”

So much tradition on campus and so much hope for a win after a crazy night.

“We’ll be at the game,” junior Alexandra Mendez said. “We’re going to go home and sleep for a few hours and then we’ll be at the game.”

A UC Berkeley spokesperson told KTVU that the pregame crowd grew to over 3,000 fans.

Kick-off is at 7:30 p.m