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Cal to Wear Grateful Dead Helmets -- Was It the Chancellor's Idea?

Cal chancellor Rich Lyons is one of the many famous Deadheads, and Lyons shows his Grateful Dead appreciation in a tie-dye video
Jake Curtis|
Helmets Cal will wear Saturday night with a version of the classic Grateful Dead logo
Helmets Cal will wear Saturday night with a version of the classic Grateful Dead logo | Cal Athletics

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California Golden Bears

A tribute to the Grateful Dead will be the theme of Cal’s Saturday night game against Wake Forest, and you have to believe that University of California-Berkeley  chancellor Rich Lyons had a hand in setting this up.

You see, like a lot of high-profile people (as listed below), Lyons is a Deadhead, and he likes to strum a guitar and play Grateful Dead songs, as he did attired in a 1960’s-style tie-dyed shirt, in the video below:

It’s appropriate for the chancellor at a university in Berkeley to do this, but could you imagine the president of Texas A&M (Robert Gates) or Ohio State (Ravi Bellamkonda) or Alabama (Peter J. Mohler) doing the tie-dye thing in a video?

None of Cal players – and even some of the Bears’ assistant coaches – had been born by the time Jerry Garcia, the central figure of the Grateful Dead, passed away in 1995, but that is not going to prevent the Bears from wearing special helmets that depict a version of the Grateful Dead’s classic skull logo.

Back of the helmet Cal will wear against Wake Forest
Back of the helmet Cal will we against Wake Forest | Cal Athletics

Cal is calling the event the Grateful Bears and apparently it is similar to what the Oregon Ducks did last year in a football game event called the Grateful Ducks.

However, Berkeley can claim a greater affinity to the Grateful Dead than Oregon, because the Dead played more concerts in or around the Cal campus than at any other university.

The Grateful Dead played 56 concerts (give or take one or two) in Berkeley -- 29 at the Greek Theater on the Cal campus from 1967 to 1989, one at Harmon Gym (now a much bigger Haas Pavilion) in 1966, 22 at the Berkeley Community Center from 1967 to 1986, and reportedly a couple at Berkeley High School.

For sports fans the most famous Deadhead was the late Bill Walton, who claimed in his autobiography to have attended 876 Grateful Dead concerts.

The range of Deadheads, which includes Cal’s Lyons,  reaches across all professions from Steve Jobs to former Federal Reserve head Jay Powell to Walter Cronkite to punk rocker Henry Rollins, and across the political spectrum from liberals Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi to right-wingers Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter.

Here’s the eclectic list of famous people considered Deadheads.

Rich Lyons, current University of California-Berkeley  chancellor and a Cal graduate class of 1982

Jay Powell, former head of the Federal Reserve

Steve Jobs, co-founder and former head of Apple

Bill Clinton, Democrat and former U.S. President

Al Gore, Democrat and former U.S. Vice President

Nancy Pelosi, Democrat and former Speaker of the House of Representatives from San Francisco

Al Franken, comedian and former left-wing U.S. senator

Patrick Leahy, Democrat and former U.S. Senator

Tucker Carlson, conservative TV commentator

Steve Bannon, former chief strategist under President Trump

Ann Coulter, conservative activist and TV pundit

Walter Cronkite, former TV newsman

Bill Walton, Hall of Fame basketball player and TV commentator with a unique style

Phil Jackson, former NBA coach who coached Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant

Woody Harrelson, actor

Will Arnett, actor

Bill Murray, funny guy and actor

John Belushi, comedy actor

George R.R. Martin, author of the book that was turned into the TV series Game of Thrones

Stephen King, author of horror books

Andy Cohen, hard to say what he is, but you know him when you see him

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons

Henry Rollins, lead singer of hardcore punk band Black Flag

Trey Anastacio, front man for rock band Phish

Jimmy Buffet, singer of “Margaritaville”

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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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