If a Tree Falls Next to a Stadium...

...Then everyone notices.

After a really long one and a half years, the trees came down and along with them, the affectionately called treewoks.

I will say that this took longer than expected, and it had nothing to do with the protesters in the trees. The beginnings of the Student-Athlete High Performance Center, which were also the beginnings of renovations to the 85-year-old Memorial Stadium, was supposed to start back in 2006, after the annual Big Game against Stanford.

But Cal got sued, which delayed construction (and cost the university a shit-load of money) and people ascended into the trees.

Fast forward to today, the trees are gone and construction can finally begin on something that was supposed to be done, like, today.

And I know, I may sound like a tree-hater, a fascist industrialist who doesn't care about the environment. But, I'm actually the opposite. And the trees that were cut down were nothing special. They were all planted back when the stadium was built back in 1923, contrary to what many of the protesters said. The set of trees that did precede the stadium are all being saved and will be replanted elsewhere within the university.

And, by the way, for every tree that Cal has cut down, it will replace it with three other trees.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

But it's all over. Finally. I'll have more on what this means for Cal, and not just the football team either. This thing will benefit the entirety of Cal sports.

For now, here's a little video that the Daily Cal made that chronicles the history of this controversy. And it features a few lines by yours truly, with me sounding like a garbled voice at the end of a phoneline, because, that's what I was--a garbled voice at the end of a phoneline. I'm also not too coherent. I apologize. But everyone else is pretty awesome.