“Resilient by Design”: Patrick Laird on What Berkeley Gives — and What It Expects in Return
6 min read
Former Cal running back and NFL veteran Patrick Laird reflects on Berkeley’s culture of resilience, education, and opportunity — and why its ethos still shapes who he is today.
Children participating in the Cal Reading Challenge applaud during a game at Memorial Stadium. The initiative, launched by former Cal running back Patrick Laird, continues under Cal Athletics today.
Patrick Laird pauses before answering when asked to describe Berkeley at its best.
“Someone’s probably listening right now and knows the exact word I’m thinking of,” he says, laughing. “But I’d say resilient.”
Laird, who played running back at Cal from 2014 to 2018 and later spent five seasons in the NFL, is best known on campus not only for his production on the field, but for launching what became the Cal Reading Challenge — a reading-access initiative that has since reached thousands of Bay Area students and remains active within Cal Athletics.
Speaking over Zoom from Southern California, Laird pauses occasionally as his dog hops onto the bench beside him — a small, unpolished detail that mirrors the grounded way he talks about Berkeley.
His answers aren’t rehearsed. They’re shaped by experience: four and a half years as a student-athlete at UC Berkeley, a degree earned alongside football, and a life shaped by an institution that doesn’t hold your hand.
A University That Doesn’t Pretend Things Are Easy
One of the first classes Laird took at Berkeley focused on inequality in American education. It changed how he understood his own upbringing.
“I realized the experience I had growing up was vastly different than a lot of people across the United States,” he says. “I grew up in a small town on the Central Coast. Two parents, older siblings who went to college—it was just expected.”
“Not every student arrives with the same academic support system,” Laird says. In many cases, parents care deeply about education but are working multiple jobs and simply don’t have the time or resources to offer the same level of guidance.
Berkeley doesn’t soften that reality.
“When I showed up at Cal, they gave you the tools,” he says. “But nobody was holding your hand.”
That pressure, Laird believes, is intentional and formative.
“If you survive,” he says, “you come out a very strong, well-rounded person.”
Education as the Great Equalizer
Laird often returns to Berkeley’s role in social mobility, a theme Chancellor Rich Lyons has emphasized publicly.
“That idea is baked into the culture,” Laird says. “It doesn’t matter where you came from—Berkeley gives you the opportunity to rise above wherever you started.”
Still, he’s careful not to romanticize it.
“A lot of students who make it here from poor backgrounds end up being the exceptions in their communities,” he says. “It would be better if that wasn’t the case—if access to opportunity was more evenly distributed.”
That belief shaped how Laird approached his role as a student-athlete visiting classrooms.
“I’d tell kids, ‘Yes, I play football—but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t take school seriously,’” he says. “Football doesn’t work without focus, without studying, without learning how to sit down and read.”
How a Touchdown Celebration Became a Movement
What started as an inside joke among teammates turned into a defining image of Laird’s Berkeley career: opening a book after touchdowns.
“Berkeley fans loved it,” he says. “It made sense here—this idea that a football player wasn’t afraid to show interest in learning.”
After his breakout 2017 season, Laird spent the summer training for the NFL, thinking deliberately about his impact beyond football.
He learned about summer learning loss, a well-documented phenomenon in which students regress academically if they don’t engage with reading over long breaks.
So he pitched Cal Athletics an idea: kids read four to six books, log them, and earn tickets to a Cal football game.
“They offered four tickets per kid,” Laird says. “I don’t think they knew how many people would sign up.”
Thousands did.
By the 2018 season opener, Memorial Stadium featured a section filled entirely with kids who had completed the Cal Reading Challenge.
“I scored the first touchdown right in front of them,” Laird recalls. “I did the book celebration, and I looked up—hundreds of kids were doing it with me.”
“That’s still my favorite moment.”
Today, the initiative continues under the Cal Cameron Institute, which Laird says now oversees community engagement efforts across Cal Athletics, expanding the challenge beyond football to other sports.
A Culture Without a Single Definition
When asked to define Berkeley culture, Laird resists simplifying it.
“There isn’t one monolithic culture,” he says. “The only thing we really share is acceptance—that everyone is different, and everyone is passionate about something.”
At Berkeley, that diversity extends far beyond demographics.
“It’s diverse in interests, in socioeconomic background, in what people want to build,” he explains. “You’re starting a media collective—Berkeley is the perfect place for that.”
Students launch startups, creative projects, research initiatives, and cultural platforms side by side.
“You show up to Berkeley and you get to pursue whatever you want,” Laird says. “Because everybody else is doing the same thing.”
Closing
Laird met his wife at Cal. He built lifelong friendships there. He credits the university for both his professional career and his personal growth.
“I owe so much to Berkeley,” he says. “The best leaders I’ve met, the best lessons I’ve learned—they all trace back to that place.”
When asked again what Berkeley looks like at its best, Laird doesn’t hesitate.
“Resilient,” he says. “Not because it’s easy—but because it asks you to figure it out.”