Welcome to another bonus episode of Calm History, an extra treat for my Silk Plus members.

What you are about to hear will sound like an article in The Onion, or a mockumentary, or a fake story written as an April Fool's Day joke.

But the backstory and the details of these pranks are real.

Yeah, I like this stuff.

I enjoy digging into the history of pranks, hoaxes, and similar kinds of mischievous skullduggery,

so you can expect more episodes in the near future about other pranks, hoaxes, and stories of Flimflam.

But for now,

A History of College Pranks,

The Big Game, The Stolen Axe, and the Ugly Tree.

This is the story of one rivalry and many pranks between two universities in California. The two

universities are the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. Both are

located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The rivalry was centered around each university's

enthusiasm to beat the other at football. And when I say football, I mean American football.

To my listeners outside the United States, I offer my deepest American apologies for our misuse

of the term football.

Anyway, this American football rivalry between the University of Calais Berkeley and Stanford University

started in 1892. This football rivalry is so tense that it's been called the Big Game since 1900,

which brings us to our first clump of fun facts about the NFL,

the term Super Bowl, and the term the big game.

Let's jump ahead to 1969.

This is when the NFL, or National Football League, invented the term Super Bowl.

Why? Because it was so much easier to say then,

...