It is 100 yards from one end zone to the other at Memorial Stadium, in the verdant Berkeley hills, where the local University of California team play football. When the next Big One hits, however, the Golden Bears' offensive line may well find it has a few more yards to make up.

Sitting directly on top of the Hayward fault, Memorial Stadium is in one the most seismically challenged corners of the San Francisco Bay area. When the nearby San Andreas fault ruptured in 1906, fence posts shifted several yards out of line as the Pacific and North American plates rubbed against each other.