hoodline
For the first time in its 144-year history, Cal football is airing home games in Spanish. The Golden Bears have introduced a Spanish-language livestream for every home game on their official YouTube channels, part of a broader campaign titled Vamos Osos that combines Spanish play-by-play with fresh social content designed to engage Berkeley's Spanish-speaking population.
The effort was spearheaded by Val Grimaldo, Cal football's digital content coordinator, who aimed to bring Spanish-language game broadcasts to local fans and strengthen the program's connection with its rapidly expanding fanbase, according to KRON4.
Brothers Behind the Mic Fulfill a Childhood Dream
Calling the games are brothers Jesus and Enrique Zarate, both of whom serve as lead Spanish play-by-play broadcasters for the San Francisco 49ers. They are joined by Carlos M. Ramirez, an AppleTV broadcaster for Major League Soccer who also works for NFL International in various roles.
The Zarate brothers called their first Cal football game in Spanish on Sept. 5, when the Bears opened the 2026 season against UCLA. According to KRON4, the brothers realized a childhood dream by finally calling live games together—a dream that Jesus said traces back to simpler days when they played Madden and pretended to announce together. Now their real-game calls include signature moments like "Touchdown! Osos Dorados!" when the Bears score.
Jesus Zarate's path to the booth began long before Berkeley. Born in Mexico, he moved to the Bay Area as an elementary schooler and became a 49ers fan early on. CBS News reports he started working as the team's Spanish-language play-by-play announcer in 2018.
A Program Looking Beyond Berkeley
The reach appears to be extending past the Bay Area. Enrique Zarate said interest in college football stretches into international regions, and he told KRON4 that people in Brazil had contacted the broadcast team. He added that Latinos are becoming involved in and falling in love with football, and that the community had shown strong support for the new coverage, with local response equally strong.
Ron Rivera, Cal football's general manager and a former NFL head coach and linebacker, framed the decision as a matter of reaching the community the program serves. "Over a quarter of the San Francisco Bay Area population is Spanish-speaking, and we want them to be a part of what we are building in Berkeley," Rivera said, according to calbears.com. KRON4 reports Rivera emphasized the program needs to reach the community.
The broadcast push lands as football keeps growing rapidly in Mexico and Latin America, per KRON4's report, and as college athletics sees rising Hispanic and Latino participation nationally. The NCAA reported 38,778 Hispanic/Latino student-athletes in 2025-26, making up 7% of the total student-athlete population, according to ncaa.org, which also reports that figure has climbed 55.2% over the past decade.
Identity on the Roster, Too
For some Cal players, the initiative resonates personally. Jericho Johnson, a Cal defensive lineman, said being African American and Mexican American is part of his identity, and he told KRON4 he welcomed his community's participation in football.
Cal joins a short list of college football programs offering fans a Spanish-language option, according to calbears.com. UCF has run Spanish-language broadcasts for five seasons through broadcasters Carlos Bohrquez and Sergio Ruiz Torres, who call games from what WESH describes as the first designated Spanish-language booth in UCF's renovated Roth Tower, with the broadcast available via the UCF Knights YouTube channel. The University of Texas, meanwhile, had roughly a 25-year head start on much of the competition in Spanish-language college broadcasting as of 2019, according to WBUR, which described Spanish-language play-by-play as a small but growing trend in college athletics.
The Zarate brothers' NFL day job offers its own evidence of the audience at stake. The 49ers provide a live Spanish-language broadcast inside Levi's Stadium through the team app, free and without the delay often associated with streaming or radio broadcasts, according to 49ers.com, which credits Jess Zárate and Carlos Yustis with leading that call. The team is set to face the Minnesota Vikings at Mexico City's Estadio Azteca on November 22, 2026, the same source reports.
League-wide numbers help explain the momentum. More than 30 million Hispanic Americans consider themselves NFL fans, according to a poll cited by Cronkite News, which also reports the NFL estimates more than 22 million people in Mexico identify as fans, with Latin America accounting for more than 40 million fans of the league overall. Separately, Latino NFL viewership rose 11% while Spanish-language broadcasts jumped 34% compared with previous years, according to OPB, which noted Telemundo became the first Spanish-language U.S. network to air the Super Bowl exclusively in Spanish in 2022.
Back in Berkeley, the new Spanish Instagram page tied to the campaign, called vamososos, will carry the main football pages' content with Spanish subtitles along with original Spanish-language material, per calbears.com. For Grimaldo, Rivera and the Zarate brothers, the goal is straightforward: give Cal's Spanish-speaking fans a seat in the broadcast booth that's been missing for 144 years.
Originally reported by hoodline.