Jonathan "Shu-Fry" Strange won the honor of being the Stanford Tree, and will begin his term in the spring, taking over for current tree Patrick Fortune, a junior from Fresno. He has quite a legacy to live up to.

In keeping with the secretive tendencies of the Band and the Tree, Strange declined to describe all of his stunts in order to keep the intrigue alive. His largest and final stunt had him dressed up in a gorilla suit as "Shu Kong" and chased around by his friends with torches and pitchforks. Against a backdrop of machine fog and red lights, he was "captured" by the angry mob and welded into a cage ball that he had constructed earlier.

Witness the glory of Tree Week.

The Mascot Is Strange [The Stanford Daily]
An Interview With Stanford's Tree [Los Angeles Times]

Last week we brought you coverage of the Stanford Tree and and cheerleader booty-licking allegations, which included a response from the tree itself. But now other photos have surfaced. Are these Stanford cheerleaders, or will they turn out to be, as before, band members posing as cheerleaders?

I think that an interview is in order. Oasis, after band practice? Stanford Tree, please email me.

Thanks to The Sports Culture for digging these up.

By Popular Demand: More Of The Wacky Stanford Tree [The Sports Culture]

Actually, it was The Tree's media representative who fired off the missive (at 1:30 a.m.). Turns out that the girls in the photo were not cheerleaders, but in fact Stanford band members posing as cheerleaders. And the photo was taken at ... the Special Olympics? Read on.

Hi-diddly-ho neighborino,

It's the folks from the Stanford Band, that organization that effortlessly blends punk pop, sousaphones and pants dropping into a homogeneous creamy mixture, here to say that we saw your entry on the Tree today and we thought we could provide the appropriate context for this rogue photo, for as you know, the Tree is actually the mascot of the Band.

First off, We (or perhaps I is more appropriate, let's drop the Leitch-esque use of the royal we) are big fans of Deadspin. I love Deadspin like a fat kid loves cake. HOW-EVA, STEPHEN A. SMITH IS HERE TO SAY THAT YOUR APPROACH TO THE TREE NEEDS MORE NUANCE. You see, the Tree is like Che Guevara with bling on, he's complex. He leads a high-stress life, filled with enemies out to get him after they found out about the Rolexes and the Lexus and that he was blowin' up like nitro. Sometimes he needs to unwind, which may attribute to his/her past indiscretions, but is not at the root of this current image which indubitably was lifted from the Tree's Facebook profile. Now I know you understand my flow, so here we go.

From the looks of the surroundings, my best estimate is that that picture was taken at the 2007 Marin Country Special Olympics, who invited the Band to provide a funk-laden rockin' soundtrack to these athletes. They appreciated our boogieing so much, the local newspaper even wrote an article about it (Lookit Martha! We's in thu paypurs!). It's not as illicit is it may initially appear. In fact, our drum major just needed a visual illustration of the Krebs cycle for his Human Biology problem set, and the Tree and Dollies were more than willing to oblige. That's all that picture is. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Also, and listen close because this part is the most important, as much as I love Deadspin posts with the cheerleader tag (and believe me do I ever) I would have to petition you to remove it from this photo. You see, those fetching lasses depicted are not cheerleaders at all. In fact, they are 3 of the Dollies, the Band's 5 woman dance team/ninja commando strike force. They only perform in a dance and/or roundhouse kick capacity, so as you can see, they are definitely not cheerleaders. The only way they resemble Stanford's designated cheerleaders is that neither of them actually lead cheers.

Finally, while nothing I can say will ever truly convince you. I can say that by and large most of the times when you see the tree he is not, in fact, schwasted, schmammered, nor even schipsy. Before every football game and basketball game, the Tree now has to take a breathalyzer test, and of course pass it. Funny story about that though, for our reunion game against TCU we had about 8 or so returning Trees, with their costumes and everything. That morning they had partaken in the Breakfast of Champions (aka beer and donuts) as well as some light post-BoC drinking, unbeknownst that a breathalyzer ambush awaited them as they entered the stadium. Twas a sad day when most of them were denied entry into the game, and made doubly sad by the fact that the entire ordeal took so long that we had no chance to do our pregame show that we spent hours on, listening to people in towers tell us how much we were messing it up. We almost didn't have time to play the Star Spangled Banner. That would have been a fine how-do-you-do. I tell you this story merely to illustrate what happens when our mission of rocking out and bringing the funk run up against stodgy administrators. It's veritably out of a college movie! Maybe a bra bomb would loosen them up a little.

Also, this story shows that maybe we should keep this picture on the d/l. If word got out that we were having S-E-X in front of the C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N, they might just close down our Sex Cauldron once and for all.

Finally, know that this letter is primarily a procrastination technique, to avoid doing my problem set, but feel free to post any of it on your interwebs.

Rock the Fuck Out,
Peter "Shotgun" McDonald
Stanford Band, Public Relations

Not sure where this was taken, but as one commenter pointed out, if nothing else the Tree has invented the term "having a treesome." I'm not laughing, mister. The Tree has been in trouble with school authorities before, and frankly I'm surprised he's still around.

• February, 2006: Arrested for getting completely shit-faced at a Cal-Stanford basketball game. Blows a .157 BAC when tested by cops.

• March, 2006: Officially fined and sanctioned by the university for drunken cavorting at the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament.

• August, 2006: Banned by the NCAA.

• March, 2007: Held off bids by new prospective band mascots: a manhole cover and a french fry.

The Stanford Tree Just ... [The Sports Culture]

"I keep thinking I should be conflicted over all of this, given that Stanford's victory allows Cal to get to No. 2 (almost No. 1 if not for LSU's big comeback)."

Yep, the 24-23 win at USC was so stunning, Cardinal supporters are worried about how it affects their arch-rival. God, they don't even know how to properly celebrate. Having grown up in the Bay Area, this doesn't surprise me at all. Unlike Texas or Oklahoma, where football is religion and one wrong word can get your scrotum ripped, we are by comparison a sleepy backwater. In the great department store of college football, we are the casual wear department.

But that doesn't make Saturday's result any less significant. Even if no one else is saying it, can I call this what it is? The biggest upset in college football history. USC opened as a 41-point favorite, and by game time the line was at 39-40. If the point spead is the standard, then this beats the runnerup, Oregon State (+36) over Washington, 21-20, in 1986. Other fun facts:

• Going into the game, Stanford was 2-14 since the start of last season and had been outscored 72-3 in the previous six quarters.
• It was the first start for quarterback Tavita Pritchard, who had thrown three passes in college.
• Stanford's defense was allowing 47 points per game in Pac-10 play.
• The Cardinal trailed 23-14 in the fourth quarter.

But for the Stanford-didn't-win-it-USC-lost-it crowd, well, things like this just don't happen without being part of some bigger picture. The fact that Stanford was even in a position to win it at the end means that this program has turned some sort of corner. The Cardinal played harder, made the the big plays when they counted and may have had a bit of divine assistance when Mark Bradford pulled down Pritchard's pass in the left corner of the end zone for the winning TD. This caused all sorts of confusion among the Versus announcers, by the way: One of whom boldly predicted — after the TD catch had tied it — that Stanford would go for the one-point conversion instead of two.

It's kind of a neat moment, too, for Jim Harbaugh, who played high school football across the street from Stanford — at Palo Alto High — before becoming the quarterback at Michigan (after Stanford admissions had turned him down). While at Paly, Harbaugh was so famous for locking his keys in his car during football season that teammates built him a jimmy device in shop class so that they wouldn't have to continually drive him home. It's that singularity of purpose that leads one to believe that he just may have a future in this football business.

On the other hand, you have John David Booty, who the same night his team lost in the biggest upset in college history, was seen doing shooters at Les Deux, an LA nightclub. It could be said that he was drowning his sorrows; if by that you meant "being draped by blondes."

Actually I'm just relieved that the Stanford band didn't march onto the field prematurely and ruin this one. That very easily could have happened.

Biggest Upset In College Football History? [Democratic Underground]
LA Nightclub Gets Booty Shots After Trojan Loss [SportsbyBrooks]
Stanford Upset Of USC Even Shocks Commentators [SportsbyBrooks]
Stanford Shocker [YouTube]

The Tree (played by junior Tommy Leep), however, would not be hauled off without a departing salvo:

"I thought this was all settled back in March," Leep said Friday night. "I sort of look at the NCAA like an ex-girlfriend trying to come and take the boom box back or something."

Will Stanford dump its tree mascot? If so, what will replace it? A bush? The letter S? A squirrel? What, we ask? What?

Tree Ruled Over The Top [SFGate]
The Dangerous Rebel With The Fresh Pine Scent [Deadspin]
Can One Costumed Beer Keg Mascot Make A Difference? Yes, He Can. [Deadspin]

Actually, students at Dartmouth are a little pissed that Keggy was named to the list, as they see him as a sign of protest against "The man." Take a look at the posts in the site's comments section, one of which is partially excerpted here:

What's important about Keggy is not so much that he's a giant beer or that he filled the void of a humanoid mascot at football games, it's that he represented a giant "$%#! you!" to the Dartmouth administration. Kegs are banned at Dartmouth unless you register them way in advance. The administration that took our kegs and tried to cut the entire swim team over Thanksgiving break tried to throw us a bone by letting us choose the next mascot, and Keggy turned the whole shabang into a giant shitburger. Keggy kicks ass, even if he comes off a little dorky as an official Ivy League mascot.

Also, no mascot list could be complete without this:

St. Louis College of Pharmacy's mascot is a Eutectic. Just so you know, this is not actually a creature, simply a chemical process.

Sad, really.

Eight Mascots That Need To Die [Armchair GM]

"We don't want to risk our core mission of rocking out and bringing funk to the funkless."

Yes. Yes he did.

Stanford Tree Fired For Alleged Drunkenness [SF Gate]