BERKELEY, Calif. -- UC Berkeley chancellor Rich Lyons was about 12 when he started visiting one of his older brothers on campus. His parents hadn't gone to college, but when his brother enrolled, those trips provided him an early window into a brand-new world. An important part of that introduction came through football. He would come for the game, spend time with his brother and find himself fascinated by the larger university community.

"If I can be honest with you," Lyons said, "I think part of it was my brother was in a fraternity. So, when I'd come to the game, we'd often gather there. And it's sort of like, 'Huh, that looks interesting.'"

Without the home games, though, his visits to his brother might not have left him as enamored with the school and, perhaps, he might have sought out a different place for his own college experience when the time came. "I think it's the whole thing," Lyons said. "The academic part of it really was part of it. It was like this brother of mine's going to this best public university in the country, and there's all this other stuff going on. The whole package just kind of blew me away."

Lyons graduated from Berkeley in 1982, achieved a doctorate in economics from MIT and returned to Berkeley in 1993 to join the Haas School of Business faculty, eventually spending a decade as dean. Through it all, his Cal football fandom endured, despite the team's decades of mediocrity. Cal's last outright conference title came in 1958. It's a remarkable drought that has come despite a steady flow of NFL talent, 12 head coaches and an otherwise successful athletic department.