Meghan:

So people seem to be pretty split on Maryland fans calling Duke players at their hotel room to harass them. Some people seem to think since in theory anything that harasses a Duke player/fan/coach/student is a good thing seem to support it. Others seem to think it was a poorly executed prank because not every harassing phone call was funny and many seemed about the level of a 12 year old. I'd like to remind everyone that we're talking about a bunch of college students. I'm guessing mostly guys, so a 12 year old's sense of humor is not that far off. A lot of the students were busy making their best Scheyerfaces and I assume drinking since that's what college kids do.

I'm generally a fan of sophomoric, obnoxious humor, so I appreciated the Maryland v. Duke pranks. It was more about harassment anyway. But for all those Terp haters out there I thought I'd share a harmless prank from a couple years ago at Maryland. Some idiot drove a truck through one of the curved walls that stand where you enter main campus. Apparently since the brick walls are curved, it's expensive to fix, so the university hangs a banner over the gaping hole for a while with a picture of our beloved Testudo breaking through the wall. However, some students decide this broken wall could be put to better use. So one night they go out, steal the banner and erect something much better in its place:

Whatever, I think it's funny.

— Meghan no longer approves of pranks, harmless or not, since applying for the Bar. She blogs at Girls Don't Know Sports.

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Absence Of Alice:

It's hard out there for a Cardinals' fan, but I had finally managed to block out the pain and soothe the crying of my inner child following the tragic events of Feb. 1, 2009. My co-workers, however, do not seem interested in my continuing mental health. Imagine my horror when I arrived at work last Monday to find this: My beloved Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em toy robots, arranged in a manner unbefitting the Super Bowl mission statement, or even common decency. In case you're wondering, yes, both originally were red. And rest assured that I will not rest until I find out who did this. You have ripped open a wound and poked it with a stick, cruel anonymous workmate. Happy now? Happy now?

Unlike the game itself, it doesn't look like Cardinals robot put up much of a fight. As for the little diorama below, I don't know what the hell is going on there, except that my Blockhead Gumby — another toy that I keep on my desk — is somehow involved in attempting to tackle Jesus. You've got to wrap, Blockhead Gumby!

You've got to hand it to Him, our Lord and Savior knows how to move the chains.

— Absence of Alice works in the health care profession, is still a Cardinals fan, and asks if you would please stay away from her desk.

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Cameron Frye:

The only prank I was ever a part of was during my senior year of college. We wanted to give our school's exiting VP, with whom we constantly butted heads (and who had the personality of stomach cancer), a proper goodbye. Now I went to a small all-women's college that goes by the nickname Pine Mattress, and the campus was in the middle of a posh residential area. The local police department was quite familiar with us and were called all the time for noise complaints by our nouveau riche neighbors.

So after throwing some ideas around, one of the maintenance guys (who was dating a girl in my dorm) informed us one of our security guards (male) stripped on the side for cash. Gave him a ring and booked one of his friends to show up at a party we were attending the next day. Oh did I mention the party was the annual Faculty & Staff cocktail party they threw for the seniors the night before graduation?

The snooze-fest started and the entertainment arrived an hour later. We snuck his Krush Groove boom box in and waited for his cue. He entered the room and oddly enough, he looked official. He confronted her, saying there was a noise complaint, and just acted like a complete dick to her — we watched her trying to stay calm and then watched him handcuff her to a chair. The look on her face when she figured out what was going on was worth the amount I spent on tuition that year. There's something about watching a woman dying from embarrassment and trying to rip off the arm of a chair so she can get loose and away from the cock that's rubbing against her cheek, that'll always make me laugh. The professors thought it was hysterical and gave the handful of us who planned it pats on the back. The next day at commencement she didn't look at any of us when she handed us our diplomas, which could explain why my name on it is spelled wrong.

— Cameron Frye never dated any of the faculty or staff during college, since she's against sleeping with the help. She can be found on https://twitter.com/cameronfrye.

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Nikki:

I've been pranked before. And I'm still a little ticked about it.

Apparently not everyone in my office (located smack in the heart of Mets territory) takes kindly to the fact that there's a Phillies fan working among them. Especially when said Phillies fan decorates her desk with all sorts of Phillies paraphernalia: newspaper clippings of articles from last year's postseason, photos of me meeting some of my favorite ballplayers (I get entirely too giddy whenever people point to the picture of Cole Hamels and me and ask if he's my boyfriend), and a variety of Phillies pennants. My cube is a red-and-white version of heaven … for me, at least. To the Mets fans, they probably think they've reached baseball hell every time they walk by my desk.

Amazingly, the Phillies stuff in my cube was left alone throughout the 2008 playoffs. The Mets fans were probably too busy running home to sit in front of their TVs, hoping that they'd get to see the Dodgers and then the Rays kick the crap outta my Phillies; after that didn't happen, they were probably too busy drowning their sorrows in booze to notice that my cube was becoming increasingly Phillie-fied.

Once they sobered up, though, they noticed. Right around Christmastime, I came into work one morning to find my Phillie-fied cube with a hole in the wall. No, not an actual hole-but a hole in the decorations. Something was missing. Something like my Cole Hamels pennant. Somebody STOLE my fucking Hamels pennant.

And it was clearly some bitter, angry Mets fan who did it. Who else would want to swipe my pennant? There are no other Phillies fans in my building. Nobody would want it to hang on their own wall. They might want it for their dartboard, though. Or to light on fire in an angry, bitter, my-shitty-Mets-choke-every-goddamn-season-lately sort of rage.

I've since taken all my other Phillies pennants down from my cube walls and hung them at home (where they're safe) and gotten myself a replacement Hamels pennant. And I'm trying to not be too bitter about it. Because yeah, I got pranked — but hopefully, the only joke that really matters will be on the Mets and their fans at the end of this season when, for the third year in a row, they'll be reciting the tired old words "There's always next year…"

— When NIKKI isn't making smartass comments about the Mets, she's busy writing snarky stuff over at Red Pen Inc.

We generally do not condone destructive mayhem here at Deadspin, but any prank involving metallurgy gets a pass. I am also reminded of the line from Woody Allen's Love and Death:

Boris: "How could I have been made in His image? Do you think God wears glasses?"
Sonja: "Not with those frames."

From the Daily Collegian, Penn State's student newspaper:

The glasses from the Joe Paterno statue on the east side of Beaver Stadium were removed and stolen sometime between Friday and Saturday, Penn State Police said. An officer was on routine patrol Saturday morning and saw the glasses were missing, police said. The glasses were removed between 11 a.m. Friday and 10:58 a.m. Saturday, police said. There is no estimated value of the damage.

OK, I'm going to turn out the lights, and when I turn them back on I expect the glasses to be on this table. No questions asked.

Greatest Sports Prank Ever? Not Quite. [FanIQ]
Recruits Don't Make Passes At Statues Without Glasses [The Arena]

By now, many of us have seen the video of the fan who ran on the track at Altamont Motorsports Park last week and stole the winning car, driving it away. The above video was all over the place, from CNN to "SportsCenter" to "Today."

It was also a complete fake, a publicity stunt pulled by "Taxbrain.com."

Before Sunday's main event, local racecar driver Justin Philpott — who later said he had no idea what was about to happen — was called onto the track to receive a "special award." The 16-year-old Tracy High junior drove his Taxbrain.com-sponsored No. 05 Western Late Model Chevrolet onto the track, did a few laps, and parked in victory lane in front of the grandstand.

He was presented with a trophy, and while he posed with a half-dozen bikini-clad young women for a photo, an unidentified man in a sleeveless T-shirt hopped into his car and drove away while a befuddled track announcer called for security.

Track security — who also had no idea the theft was staged and the "thief" was an actor — immediately sprung into action. They blocked the car's path with tow trucks, pulled the thief from the vehicle, and violently wrestled him to the dirt on the track's infield — all in full view of video cameras in the stands and a camera crew on the infield.

So, in other words, the "theft" wasn't real, but the beatdown of the "actor" was. Sweet.

Instant Fame ... Or Infamy [Tracy Press]

Starting with Chiarelli, he claims he was just "going along with the joke," and given certain things in the phone call, you'd have to assume that's true. I don't want to give much away, but he certainly doesn't sound like he's joking. He's a convincing fellow.

And in talking to mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo, The Beast guys suggested that they up the ante of the previous bet (chicken wings vs. beavertails) to, um... well... "services" from their respectives wives. Mrs. Brown wasn't having it, but Mr. Brown... well, he never gave an official 'no.' I love the enthusiasm and accent of the fake Bob Chiarelli here.

I don't want to say much more, because if you do anything today, you should go read the transcripts and listen to the calls for yourself. They are priceless. Start here.

A Prank of Two Cities [The BEAST]
Prankster offers mayor NHL win [Globe and Mail]

Well, according to more than one Deadspin tipster a highly involved(and evolved) prank was executed on the MSU student body over the weekend during Saturday's Michigan State/Michigan basketball game. Some students at the University of Michigan posed as Big 10 interns to distribute cards to unsuspecting Izzone darlings which were supposed to say "GO STATE." Instead, they said "GO BLUE".(The above picture is what it was supposed to look like.) One of the pranksters has given us full detail of how this time-consuming, maniacal prank was executed. Apparently, 625 members of the MSU student body held up the phony cards at one point, dumbfounded by the cruel Punk'd-like ruse set upon them:

"A ton of planning went into this (I spent a hell of a lot more time on this over the last week or so than I did on schoolwork), so I was a little disappointed with the actual outcome. We didn't have them hold the cards up for long enough, which made it tough for people in the arena to figure out what they said before the students took them down again. The cards weren't big enough, but that was because of cost reasons. And finally, you can tell in the pictures that a few people in the U moved around, and they completely mangled our E."

Damn E's. Read the full report after the jump and look at the actual picture, which, unfortunately, don't showcase the prank very well. Just read the Green sections on the high res picture and you can figure out what's going on. Kind of.

A few friends and I tricked the Izzone (MSU's student section) into holding up a card stunt that said "GO BLUE" before yesterday's game.
I snuck into the Breslin Center with 3 other UM students about an hour before the gates opened posing as Big Ten interns. We got in through an access tunnel and past a security desk without having to say a word.

When we walked out onto the court there were already a few doze Izzone members there passing out their materials. We talked to them
for a few minutes, letting them know about the Big Ten promotion that
was going to happen; they were all pretty excited, to the point of
offering to help us pass out the cards. We passed out 625 cards in
total. During the National Anthem, 625 Michigan State students held
up cards that they thought spelled out "GO STATE"...unfortunately for
them, it was "GO BLUE." A ton of planning went into this (I spent a hell of a lot more time on this over the last week or so than I did on schoolwork), so I was a little disappointed with the actual outcome. We didn't have them hold the cards up for long enough, which made it tough for people in the arena to figure out what they said before the students took them down again. The cards weren't big enough, but that was because of cost reasons. And finally, you can tell in the pictures that a few peopl in the U moved around, and they completely mangled our E.

Regardless,I still feel that we owned the Izzone.