SI.com’s Stuart Mandel twaggered this video of a Cal defensive lineman taken from their loss against Oregon Saturday. We can see Aaron Tipoti apparently faking a leg injury after looking over to his team’s sideline.

“I know any time anybody goes down against Oregon, (Duck fans) always think that’s the case, but it’s not the case,” Cal coach Jeff Tedford said when asked if the injuries were faked.

However, a source within the Bears football program confirmed to The Oregonian that this indeed was “a big part” of the defensive game plan against Oregon, although not all Cal coaches were on board with this strategy.

The idea, of course, is to give the defense a rest while disrupting an Oregon offense that heavily relies on rhythm.

–The Oregonian.

Is anyone surprised about this? Half the reason that the Ducks are so good is that they’re almost a track team in helmets. If you allow teams to substitute during an injury timeout, then the incentive to go all Euro is there for everyone. Granted, most teams’ defenses only need to swap out an interior lineman for a nickelback to improve their third down look, but forbidding any other substitutions during an injury timeout would go a long way. Or at least throw the flag whenever the guy falls onto the ball.

So the University of California-Berkeley hasn’t been to a Rose Bowl in 50 years, but that hasn’t stopped their athletic department from charging its fanbase as if they were supporting a perennial powerhouse. From Game On:

So no, Berkeley hasn’t exactly been a football factory the last half-century. But that hasn’t hurt the self-esteem at Cal, where the university is asking fans to pay $225,000 — yes, $225,000! — for personal seat licenses.

That’s the per-seat tab being sought from about 3,000 fans who have spots between the 30-yard lines at Memorial Stadium, which is slowly eroding because it sits on a major earthquake fault line.

I didn’t realize that their program was eroding in a literal sense. You’d think one of those hippies would have pulled out a seismometer before they actually started building it. If only Southern Cal would have had this problem; nothing would please me more than to see that program mashed between a pair of tectonic plates. It’s too pleasant a death for them, really…

The suspects were armed with a weapon that turned out to be a BB gun [and] entered the residence through an open kitchen window. One man went into a bedroom, turned on the light and slammed the door shut before demanding a laptop computer at gunpoint, UC Berkeley said…

Garrett and Doxy were charged Monday with robbery and attempted robbery. Garrett was also charged with possessing an illegal, stolen sawed-off shotgun… Both men will also face student conduct charges.

Yes, they might go to jail for felony offenses, but what really stings is the student conduct charges.  They might get their library privileges revoked!

I feel especially bad for the non-racist white kids here.  Not because they were roused from bed and robbed in the middle of the night, but because Doxy and Garrett didn’t even respect them enough to use the sawed-off shotgun.  “Hey, should I bring my sawed-off shotgun to this robbery?” “Nope, this BB gun should be enough for these pussies.”  And it was.  Pussies.

[Sports by Brooks]

Busted Coverage is compiling the best football hits of 2008, and offers up this helmet-popping stick from a high school game. Ha ha, look at that little twerp on the ground! He’s probably a virgin, too!

Nothing, however, is as delightful as a hit so hard that it (a) knocks a player’s helmet off, AND (b) makes him vomit, as seen in the Cal-Maryland game last Saturday.

Is it wrong to have an erection after watching that? I say no.

You may or may not have heard about the dirty hippies trying to save some trees in Berkeley, but the story is less likely to be under the radar now that the hippies have gotten naked.

Seventy-eight performance artists, models, protesters and their supporters stripped down for the camera in a grove of oak trees at UC Berkeley that could fall to make room for an athletic training center. The au-naturel visitors joined a half-dozen activists who have lived in the trees since December to protest Cal's plan to raze the grove near Memorial Stadium.

Ugh, "performance artists." That's what they call hippies who don't have any actual artistic talent.

Man, this is a dilemma. Like, I think trees are great and I tend to dislike the money-grubbing machinations of large universities, but… I fucking hate hippies. Isn't there some way the trees could be saved but the hippies destroyed? I would hate to see one of those animals living in my favorite grove of trees. Who made hippie-shooting illegal, anyway? Was it that pussy Carter?

Much more funniness at Deadspin and especially Every Day Should Be Saturday. 

Caroll Russell, the coach of the University of Nebraska-Kearney womens basketball team, rushed to re-join her team in time for its blowout loss to North Dakota in the North Central Region tournament… five hours after she gave birth to her first child.

"I could have watched the Webcast, but I wanted to be there for the girls because they've been working so hard for this all year," Russell said…

[She] said her team seemed tired in the second half. Tired was something she could relate to. "I usually stand up the whole game but I didn't have the energy," said the 35-year-old Russell, who's in her fifth year as coach.

What a heartwarming tale of a coach's love for her team. "Congratulations, Mrs. Russell! It's a boy! Do you want to hold him?" — "Uh, I think this so-called 'miracle of life' can wait a couple hours. My Division-II women's team is playing in the North Central Region tournament! Just have the umbilical cord cut by the time I get back. And towel that thing off — it's all sticky and gross. Oh, and somebody should probably feed it while I'm gone. See ya!"

And then she got in her car and went 90 through a school zone because it's so great that she wanted to support her team.

Wow, what a lineup for bowl games last night. For whatever reason, #16 Rutgers (10-2) was paired up with unranked and shitty K-State in the Unsponsored Texas Bowl, and the results were predictable: 37-10, Rutgers. That's how they roll in Jersey, yo.

In the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl, #20 Cal stomped the shit out of #21 Texas A&M 45-10, putting to rest that nationwide debate about which team is really the twentieth-best in the country. Also proven: Bears still dangerous. Not proven, but true nonetheless: Aggie fans are universally irritating.

Who would have thought that the only good game last night would be between two teams who have no business in a "bowl game"? Oklahoma State eked out a last-minute 34-31 win over Alabama in a battle of teams trying not to finish under .500. It was the NFC First-Round Playoffs Independence Bowl, I believe.

Riveting. Only another, what, ten days? until we can finally start arguing about how Rose Bowl winner Michigan needs to play a game against BCS winner Florida to determine a TRUE national champion. I can't wait.