A perfect Berkeley paradox: Big-money college football and an antiestablishment protest

JEFF TEDFORD LOOKED retired of his bureau model and saw helicopters circling. Below, a assemblage had gathered to ticker the past holdouts yet descend from an oak histrion beside California Memorial Stadium. TV quality vans lined Piedmont Avenue successful Berkeley, and rooftops crossed field filled with radical hoping for a glimpse of what was happening.

Tedford, Cal's astir palmy manager of the modern era, had grown accustomed to the unusual scene. Twenty-one months earlier, activists began a tree-sit successful December 2006, with immoderate really surviving successful trees, to protestation the removal of an oak grove adjacent to the stadium, portion of a long-planned seismic retrofit and facilities upgrade project. The objection called itself Save the Oaks.

The spot of field had embodied 1 of the galore contradictions of Berkeley -- a spot wherever an biology protestation and big-time assemblage shot could unfold connected other sides of the aforesaid stadium wall.

"It was similar a fricking circus," Tedford said recently. "My bureau was astir a 100 feet from the trees, truthful I got to spot astir of it and perceive astir each of it."

Over time, the grove transformed into a tiny treetop village. Platforms appeared betwixt branches. Ropes and pulleys dangled from above. Zip lines stretched from histrion to tree, connecting the makeshift outposts similar a canopy freeway. Eventually, the tree-sit had go an planetary curiosity.

The impasse had lasted astir 2 years -- from the 2006 Big Game to the commencement of the 2008 season. Cal shot surged astatine the time, entering the apical 10 successful 2006, and rising to No. 2 nationally pursuing a 5-0 commencement successful 2007. Meanwhile, determination was a photograph sprout of bare protestors successful the trees.

As Save the Oaks entered its last stage, assemblage workers surrounded the past occupied histrion with scaffolding, layering it upward until it reached the lingering protestors, with tarps supra to shield them from immoderate mightiness fall. When the scaffolding rose, truthful did a impermanent staircase inside. UC Berkeley constabulary main Vicky Harrison was lifted into the aerial successful the handbasket of a cherry picker, and addressed the demonstrators.

"I said, 'OK, guys, you had a bully run. Let's bash this the casual way,'" Harrison said recently. "And then, of course, I did a small threatening wherever I fundamentally said, 'I've already talked to the territory attorney. If anybody gets hurt, if immoderate of the officers get hurt, if immoderate of the histrion guys get hurt, there's going to beryllium not misdemeanor charges, but felony charges.'"

The past protestors conceded. It was over.

"It ended precise peacefully," Harrison said.

Seventeen years later, arsenic Tedford is acceptable to beryllium inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame erstwhile the Golden Bears big North Carolina (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), the representation inactive feels surreal. Tedford, Cal's all-time winningest coach, built a squad that, astatine times, hovered connected the cusp of nationalist contention, each portion yards distant from 1 of the strangest protests successful assemblage sports history.

CALIFORNIA MEMORIAL STADIUM is nestled into Strawberry Canyon, butting up against the Berkeley Hills. On wide days, fans successful the precocious rows get views of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge. The stadium opened successful 1923, and it sits atop the Hayward Fault, regarded arsenic 1 of the Bay Area's astir superior seismic threats.

In February 2005, Cal announced plans to "renovate and seismically strengthen" the stadium, citing some information owed to the responsibility enactment and the request to modernize its diversion facilities, which were located wrong the stadium. These facilities, utilized regular by Cal athletes, included value training, nutrition and sports medicine areas.

The connection called for a 142,000-square-foot grooming installation on the...