UW Football
Tedford: California's golden Bear

By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter

JED JACOBSOHN / GETTY IMAGES Jeff Tedford passed up several jobs last year to stay at California.

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When Jeff Tedford took over at California in 2002, he noticed the garbage tended to be picked up at the stadium at the same time as a regular team meeting, potentially providing a distraction. Pretty soon, the garbage man came on a different day.

And the person who answered the phone in the football office, Tedford decided, didn't sound sufficiently cheerful in case a prospective recruit was on the other end. Pretty soon, a different, more upbeat voice was greeting callers to the California football office.

"They started from the bottom up and took care of all the little stuff and that trickled up to the big stuff," said Cal junior cornerback Harrison Smith.

Quickly, they all became believers in the Tedford way at Cal and embarked on a turnaround that ranks as one of the most dramatic in Pac-10 history, if not all of college football.

Just three seasons after going 1-10, the one win coming against a 2-9 Rutgers team, the Cal Bears — who play tomorrow at UW in the home finale for the Huskies — are not only contending for the Pac-10 title, but still hold legitimate national-championship hopes as well.

Cal is 7-1 and ranked No. 5 in the country, and two years after being an 11-point underdog at UW, comes to town Saturday as a 30½-point favorite.

"Wow, the tables have turned," said center Marvin Phillip, who arrived at Cal in 2000. "Back then, you wouldn't want to wear your football clothes to school just to save yourself the embarrassment. Now you wear it around campus with pride."

And almost all of the credit for the turnaround goes to Tedford, a one-time quarterback at Fresno State who four years ago was a well-regarded but relatively little-known assistant at Oregon. Now he may be the hottest name in coaching.

So hot, that many figure the Huskies — who if you haven't heard, are looking for a new coach and are likely to at least put in a call to Tedford — will be lucky to get a shot at him, and not the other way around.
 
"Cal sort of rolled the dice on him and it turns out he's one of those guys who had spent every waking moment as an assistant watching what the head coach had been doing right and wrong," said one person close to the Cal program. "Nobody's ever asked Tedford a question where he didn't have the answer immediately. It's like he's thought about every possible contingency the football program could face."

Tedford did catch a few breaks along the way. Around the same time he was hired, Cal's administration underwent some changes as well, resulting in an increased football budget and some alterations to the summer-school schedule, which previously had often conflicted with the beginning of fall camp.

His first Cal team in 2002 featured 18 returning starters left behind by predecessor Tom Holmoe, including two first-round draft picks in quarterback Kyle Boller and safety Nnamdi Asomugha. Led by those seniors, Tedford's first team in 2002 went 7-5 and immediately sold everyone on the Tedford way.

"Holmoe had recruited well," said Lee Grosscup, the former NFL quarterback who has been part of Cal's broadcast team for 14 years. "That's why it was so disappointing because he had recruited this great group of guys and couldn't get anything out of them. When Tedford came in, he just took some very talented players who had lost belief in themselves and got a change of attitude out of them."

That "change in attitude" is a common thread among those who are asked where Tedford has made the biggest impact.

"He talked to them both collectively and individually and told them what his plans were, what his goals were, and he made them believe," Grosscup said.

Tedford has apparently made Cal an immediate winner without sacrificing the future too much. While he brought in 10 junior-college transfers in 2003 — including the likes of QB Aaron Rodgers and RB J.J. Arrington — last year's class included 15 freshmen and was ranked among the top 20 in the nation.

Still, the fact Cal has 20 seniors on its roster this season — and could lose Rodgers, a junior, early to the NFL — is one of the reasons some think Tedford could be open to leaving.

While he says he's happy at Cal — and pointed out this week he turned down several offers last year, including one from the Chicago Bears — he also hasn't flat-out said he's staying. He has well-documented clauses in his contract that make it easier for him to leave if the school hasn't broken ground on a renovation of antiquated Memorial Stadium by the end of the year.

Tedford reportedly makes about $725,000 a year, and there are rumors the Huskies are willing to offer a new coach as much as three times that number.

"He has more to stay for now than he did in 2002 after he was Pac-10 Coach of the Year," Grosscup said. "There were all kinds of offers and he decided to stay. Now that he has laid the foundation for success, there are more reasons for him to stay. But no one really knows the answer to that."

Phillip says it's not something Cal players are worried about yet.

"You get a little talk here and there," he said. "But we are committed to him and we feel he is committed to us as well. We feel when he came here he made a commitment to this team."

Certainly, he made the difference.

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com

Tedford's turnaround
Here's a look at Cal's last four seasons
Year	Coach	Record*	Comment
2001	Tom Holmoe	1-10, 0-8	outscored 333-148 in Pac-10 games
2002	Jeff Tedford	7-5, 4-4	Beat three ranked teams
2003	Tedford	8-6, 5-3	Beat Va. Tech in Insight Bowl
2004	Tedford	7-1, 5-1	Only loss 23-17 at No. 1 USC
* overall, Pac-10