FanHouse Hippies

The momentus court decision has in Cal's Hippiegate has come and gone with both sides claiming victory. The U:

"This in no way affects our ability to build the center," said UC spokesman Dan Mogulof. "This is a great ruling for us."

The freakin' hippies:

"We are ecstatic," said Stephan Volker, attorney for the California Oak Foundation, which sued the university two years ago. "We believe this project is now dead."

Who's right? The blogosphere supplies answers where newspapers fear to tread because of law-talkin'. Over at California Golden Blogs two official law-talkin' guys break the decision down something fierce, one in the comments section and one in his own post.

Usually when College Football fans hear "blackout" they think of some Thursday night football game in the Big East or ACC where the home team wears all-black jerseys and ask all the fans to don black to the night game as well.

In the case of the October 20th UCLA-Cal game, the words "black out" will have a whole new meaning. Former Google spokesman and environmental activist Nate Tyler is asking everyone in San Francisco to go without electricity for one hour between 8 PM and 9 PM that Saturday night.

If the game is selected as ABC's West Coast game of the week--which is likely since USC will be playing on the Notre-Dame Broadcasting Channel and this game will determine second place in the Pac Ten--that 8 PM to 9 PM time slot will coincide with the game's Fourth Quarter. Not that it matters. Winner goes to the Holiday Bowl.

Environmental Hippiness and the Cal Bears Previously On Fanhouse:
Wonderful Treetards Allowed to Remain in Precious, Irreplacable Old Forest
What Y'all Doin' in That Tree? and Other Lingering SEC Questions, Week 1
Cal's Hippiegate Gets Worse
Cal Held Hostage By Hippies: Hupdate
Hippies Block Cal Stadium Expansion

Oh, Berkeley hippies, how I love you and your quixotic quest to save a few trees adjacent to Memorial Stadium for no particular reason whatsoever. It is you and your irrelevant mountain of red tape that has delayed the renovation project Jeff Tedford demanded if he was going to stay at Cal, and now a judge has said the hippies can stay:
Several lawsuits brought forth by various interested parties, including the city of Berkeley itself(!!!) are scheduled to go to trial next month... and probably drag on well into the spring, long enough for the Michigan job to come open and for the Wolverines to pounce on Tedford before his buyout doubles when Cal puts the renovation's first shovel in the ground. Win, you ludicrous bastards, win. Uh... because of the trees and stuff. Yeah, that's the ticket. We all have deep concern for trees here in Michigan. It has nothing to do with Jeff Tedford being an ass kicking savior guy.

(Via Signal To Noise.)

Previously On Fanhouse:
What Y'all Doin' in That Tree? and Other Lingering SEC Questions, Week 1
Cal's Hippiegate Gets Worse
Cal Held Hostage By Hippies: Hupdate
Hippies Block Cal Stadium Expansion

They were last seen blocking the relocation of Cal's football stadium from its current location directly over a major fault line because its replacement would be located where some old trees stand. In their wacky scale the lives of tens of thousands of people on balance are less important than a few trees in the middle of one of the nation's most populous cities.

Anyway, this dude's saying future caps on pollution emissions and peak oil will kill most sports as travel costs become prohibitive. Oh and do away with night games while we're at it.

I reckon, in the next few years, as a result of caps on emissions and peak oil being reached, that we can say goodbye to international sports and most national sports. The idea that you could fly people and teams all over America, all over the globe, all the time, just to play sport, is so late twentieth century. Fifty years ago it was still something of a novelty to see people flying to play sport. Now it is taken for granted.

But not for long. Get ready to say goodbye to international tennis, golf, motor racing, Olympic Games. Won't be viable much longer. Nor will it be viable to send baseball, football, basketball, ice hockey teams criss-crossing the US every day.

There's more than a touch of sarcasm in the article but the way the world's going it's actually something that could sadly happen if the enviro-nuts have their way (hello, Kyoto!).

What does this have to do with college football? Well, for all the clamoring about the need for more intersectional games such a cap on travel would be rather counterproductive. The SEC would certainly love the change as it could go on its merry way scheduling nearby conference foes and regional nobodies. But the end of USC/Notre Dame or Ohio State/Texas type games would be highly annoying.

So uh, fight the hippies. Just look for the folks smelling their own smug.

(H/T: Sports Filter)

About a month ago word came down that Cal's planned athletic facilities upgrade had been temporarily halted by literally tree-hugging hippies. Apparently the hippies' legal counsel was wiser than their hairstylists -- white male dreadlocks were regrettably prominent -- and managed to get the facilities delayed based on some obscure seismic statutes. Everyone was duly pissed off and waited for the next shoe to drop.

That shoe appears to be an 80-year old archaeological report featuring one skeleton and one 19th century Mexican coin:

he protesters, who have been roosting in the oak grove since Dec. 2, pointed Tuesday to a UC archaeological survey from 1925 stating that human remains were removed from the area when the stadium was constructed.

"I think this is a significant find and the area should be protected," said Stephan Volker, attorney for the California Oak Foundation, one of four groups suing UC over the proposed renovation of Memorial Stadium and construction of the $125 million sports training center.

Cal blog Tightwad Hill sees through this obvious load of crap and is unamused:

In reality, what the anthropologist in question found was a partial skeleton and a Mexican gold coin dating from the 19th century - but please don't pay attention to the facts. After all, the facts don't really matter - the hippies have another interest group to drag up into the trees and yell into bullhorns. What they lack in gainful employment is more than matched, I'm sure, by their energy and enthusiasm for civil disobedience.

Never mind that no one EVEN KNEW ABOUT THIS SO-CALLED REPORT until the lawyer for the hippies dug it up and shopped it around. It's still very sacred, I'm sure. Break out the smudge sticks and the burning sage, and let's party! Sorry if you think I'm being flippant, but this is the worst sort of opportunism. This 1925 report has yet to be corroborated by any other source. Ken Lightfoot - who as the head of the UC Museum of Anthropology, knows a thing or two about the subject - is unimpressed and says the skeleton's ethnicity is undetermined.

It would only be flippant if there was the slightest shred of evidence that this 1925 report was relevant to anyone except unemployed people with awful hair and kickin' lawyers.

First: Jeff Tedford's initial reaction to the fiasco is, as expected, dull. Via The Band Is On The Field, this SF Chron article has his first words on Hippiegate:

"Anybody who's asking those questions [about his dedication to Cal] is very uneducated to my feelings to Cal and this program," Tedford said. "My commitment is unwavering. My commitment is 100 percent to Cal. I'm not panicking. I'm not fazed by this at all. "I want those statements to be clear to our players, our recruits and anyone else who is wondering."

That's the only thing a man facing down signing day in less than two weeks could possibly say, but if the project is permanently kiboshed that would have to put a damper on his enthusiasm for staying at Cal.

The chances of that seem slim for any panicking Cal fans out there. Though the hippies are engaged in some literal tree-hugging, the injunction was granted based on a California law prohibiting state buildings from going up on earthquake faults. Tightwad Hill explains:

[The judge's] ruling hasn't been released to the public, but the Chronicle report suggests that she found a likelihood that the stadium project would violate the Alquist-Priolo Act, which forbids the state from building new buildings on active earthquake faults. The University submitted a number of tests to the court, some of which showed no seismic activity under the project and others that were inconclusive.

So... that seems like a technicality unrelated to the whole hippie-tree mating thing and not one that is likely to stand up in court. End result is probably a trial that Hippies, Inc., loses and Cal proceeding with construction next year unless Hippies, Inc., comes up with more red tape. Obviously, that's not impossible. It's California and hippies are known to smell and be legally crafty.

Yeah, when I first read about this at Tightwad Hill I thought terming the people trying to prevent a bunch of trees from getting cut down "hippies" was harsh, but... yeah...



Those are some crunchy frickin' hippies right there. I can smell the Bob Marley concert from here. Anyway: confirmed hippies have succeeded in getting a preliminary injunction that prevents Cal from making planned stadium and practice field expansions. This, of course, is the sort of thing that could only happen at Cal-Berkeley. Hippie-featuring video can be found at KRON. The Cal Football Fan calls this a "major blow" against the facilities renovations Jeff Tedford demanded before signing a contract extension with the Bears.

What we need hyeah, of course, is some Slayer.