 |
|
     |
|
|
By Demian Bulwa During his final two years as offensive coordinator at Oregon in 2000 and 2001, Jeff Tedford was stressed out and “borderline unhealthy,” frequently waking in the middle of the night in a panicked, cold sweat. He couldn’t stop thinking about football. Tedford found an interesting way to mellow out when Cal hired him as head coach two years ago: he upped his work hours. Instead of going home at 11 p.m. during the week, he now thinks about football well past midnight, at which point he beds down on an air mattress in his Memorial Stadium office. And that’s still not quite enough for Tedford, who lays a notepad and pen beside him in case he thinks about football in his dreams. “Now at 1, 1:30 in the morning, I feel good. I’ve exhausted everything and it’s time to sleep,” says the coach, who typically spends at least four nights a week away from his wife and two teenage sons in Danville. “Its overboard, but you know what? It works for me personally.” It also works for Cal fans personally. Tedford has transformed a win-starved program facing NCAA probation into a major bowl contender with soaring revenue and a stadium renovation in the works. He’s done so well that Cal fans are worried this coach might leave by choice. The turnaround has been so sharp that the Bears have scored more points in two years under Tedford (884) than they did in their previous four seasons under Tom Holmoe (810). This year, pre-season football magazines have ranked Cal as high as No. 11. And Joe Kapp is “looking forward to drinking tequila”--a reference to a promise he made, when he became Cal’s coach in 1981, to forgo the stuff until the Bears returned to the Rose Bowl. Those who know Tedford say his ritual of spending the night at the office--which has been adopted by almost his entire coaching staff-- is a good example of why he’s successful. He’s an overacheiver who asks a great deal of his players and assistants, but only after pushing himself to extremes. He builds authority quietly by fine-tuning every detail of his program, grinding through long hours, and bringing an unusual sensitivity to the overall lives of his players. Senior defensive lineman Lorenzo Alexander says there’s a new sense of accountability on the squad; both the coach and his players are willing to take responsibility when things go wrong. Tedford has taken the blame for losses in the locker room, while junior quarterback Aaron Rodgers has told a teammate who complimented him, “Nah, I made a slow read.” “Tedford demands a lot,” Alexander says. “And when someone has confidence in you, when they trust you, you want to play harder for them. There’s no high and low. He won’t kiss your butt and he won’t say you have no talent. ” During an interview this spring, Tedford swiveled his office chair toward a massive flat-screen television on one wall of his office. Wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt, he was watching a game from last season between West Virginia and Miami, two teams Cal is not scheduled to play at any point in the future. “A couple of the teams we face have the scheme Miami plays,” he explained. “That’s what it’s all about.” To those fans starting to consider Tedford a genius, defensive coordinator Bob Gregory says, “If genius is working your butt off until 3 a.m., then yes, he’s a genius.” Gregory also sleeps in his office, on a foam pad that appears to be geared more for forays into the wilderness than for comfort. Tedford, who is 42, has always believed he must outwork his competition. He was raised in Downey, in Los Angeles County, by a single mother and an attentive older brother, Dennis.
Though just 5-foot-10 and 150 pounds at the time, Tedford was an all-section quarterback at Warren High School. Without a scholarship, he followed former Warren coach Frank Mazzotta to Cerritos College in Norwalk; after two years Mazzotta recommended the young quarterback to his friend, Fresno State coach Jim Sweeney. Tedford became an honorable mention All-American under Sweeney, then played six seasons, primarily as a second-stringer, in the Canadian Football League. “It probably hurt him to never be a No. 1 quarterback,” says Wally Buono, a longtime CFL coach whom Tedford assisted during his first coaching job in Calgary. “But sometimes the overachievers as players become the great coaches. Part of that is learning how to get the most out of what they have.” For 13 years, Tedford helped breed prodigious offenses as an assistant coach, notably under the emotional and detail-driven Sweeney at Fresno State and the passing-game guru Mike Bellotti at Oregon. In what some see as the best example of his passion for the intricacies of football and his ability to cultivate young athletes, he sent a string of quarterbacks--Trent Dilfer, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, and David Carr--to the NFL as first-round draft picks. But Bellotti said he knew Tedford would succeed because he “pushed himself first,” and because he believed in his players. “If you’re not sure, and the team knows you’re not sure, you’re in trouble,” Bellotti says. Tedford would need that certainty at Cal. Five years earlier he had taken himself out of consideration for the top job at Fresno State because he felt he hadn’t yet learned enough. Then he saw what many others have seen at Cal: a Pac-10 team at a top academic school in a prime location that really ought to be winning. “It was an eye-opener, to tell you the truth,” Tedford says of coming to Cal. Oregon had been 21–3 in Tedford’s last two years, and now he took over a squad with just one victory the previous season. He found embarrassed players who shielded their faces on campus. More than that, he found a losing culture that had neglected the details; he was stunned to find no bathroom in Cal’s coaching offices, and debris collecting under stadium bleachers. When he and his new staff asked players to name four team leaders, he says, “We found out there were none.” Tedford’s response--which included, immediately, a new bathroom--reached into every aspect of the program, starting off the field. His goal was to make players feel good about themselves, but also to be accountable for their decisions. Tedford met with every player on the team, asking not only about their concerns and goals but also about what kind of shoes, movies, and dinners they preferred. He set up “unity meetings” of eight to ten players each in an effort to break up cliques that had formed among positions and along racial lines. And every night during pre-season training camp he brought in guest speakers that included police officers, a drug-addiction counselor, and an agent, preparing his young players for the worst pressures of college and professional football. “He got us involved with each other,” says junior tailback Terrell Williams. “If you bond off the field, it makes it easier to trust your teammates on the field.” Tedford doesn’t forget that his athletes are students, too. His “academic game plan,” which he borrowed from his days at Fresno State, classifies students as green, red, or yellow based on their grade-point average and their progress accumulating units. Greens have a GPA of 2.5 or better and must meet with their position coach once a week to show they are taking notes in class and to set goals for the future. Yellows (2.25-2.49 GPA) must meet twice a week with coaches, while Reds (under 2.5) get three meetings. Grade averages team-wide have improved since the system began. Coaches consider the meetings an opportunity to pick up other potential problems players may be facing. “This is a critical age, there’s no doubt. We’re really an extension of the parental arm--these kids are leaving home for the first time,” Tedford says of his players. “There’s so much more to this job than X’s and O’s. There are still lessons being learned, there’s still character being built. ” In recruiting, Tedford hooked up with many Bay Area high school coaches, and he started landing many of their best players, who before had frequently drifted to Los Angeles or Oregon. Those coaches now often watch Cal practice to pick up pointers, and some have been known to tip off Tedford and his assistants if, in the course of scouting opponents, they notice an athlete with overlooked talent. According to McClymonds (Oakland) High School coach Alonzo Carter--whose gifted senior quarterback Kyle Reed recently chose Cal over such schools as Oregon, UCLA, and Arizona--Tedford sells himself without “sugar coating,” telling kids who else he has at their position, stressing Cal academics, and “approaching them the way he’d want his sons to be approached.” On the practice field, where Tedford paces with arms crossed and eyes shielded behind wraparound shades, the coach introduced tightly-scripted periods that tick away on a giant midfield clock. The script is printed, passed out, and reviewed in advance by players. Williams says practices were looser affairs under Holmoe; he recalls the coach being openly challenged by an assistant after he ordered a linebacker off the field for tackling a quarterback during a drill. In the Tedford era, the coach’s word is law. “On the field,” Tedford says, “it’s about focus and attention to detail and doing all the little things right. We’re not going to let anything slip, because as soon as you let one thing slip it all gets away from you.” Players say Tedford’s sheer preparation is intimidating. But former athletic director Steve Gladstone, who hired Tedford, says, “You don’t get athletes to perform consistently at a high level unless there’s empathy there.
Finally, there was the dramatic turnaround on the field. On the first play of his first game at Cal, in 2002, Tedford sent a signal to his team and to the fans--that it was new era, and football is supposed to be fun--by calling a double pass that went for a 71-yard touchdown. Since then, Cal is 15–11, with a bowl win (Holmoe was 16–39 in five years). The program’s success has been a financial boon. The University sold 16,000 season tickets the coach’s rookie year and is projecting 29,000 this year. Corporate sponsorships are expected to reap $3.5 million this year and $4.2 million next year, up from $2.7 million in 2003. Alumni donations jumped from $500,000 to $900,000 in two years. And the University in January announced a $140-million Memorial Stadium renovation, which Tedford had written into his contract. At the same time, Tedford has cemented his status as a quarterback’s guru. First, after three difficult seasons at Cal, Kyle Boller had a rebirth under Tedford and became the 19th pick in the NFL draft after the 2002 season. Now, Rodgers--who, like Tedford, wasn’t recruited out of high school--is being mentioned as a possible Heisman Trophy candidate. His grooming gives a look into Tedford’s style. “For me, the key with him was to realize he was only 19 years old last year, even though he seems like a fifth-year starter,” Tedford says. “Just because he’s had some success, we still can’t let anything slip in preparation, mentally or physically.” Rodgers says his relationship with the coach is “like a roller coaster”--intense but fun. Tedford breaks down every aspect of Rodgers’s form and decision-making, but won’t yell at him or embarrass him. He spends time reviewing offensive schemes to make sure his pupil understands them. The two are close, but Rodgers claims a healthy fear of his coach; the quarterback once made a joke about Tedford’s receding hairline, but his height (6-foot to Rodgers’s 6-foot-2) is off limits. “Coach knows what buttons to push with players,” he says. “We’re both perfectionists, so he tells me to never be satisfied with a mediocre effort.” After Rodgers ran for a touchdown on an option play at last year’s Cal victory in the Insight Bowl, Tedford told him he made a poor decision by running left instead of right. Rodgers couldn’t believe he was being second-guessed after scoring. But, when he watched the game tape later, he said: “Sure enough, coach was right. Man, you can’t get anything by him.” Other players say the same thing: You can’t get anything by Tedford. It’s not the sexiest team slogan, but it sure is effective. A football coach who selects, recruits, teaches, and protects more than 100 young men has enormous power. Tedford’s success stems at least in part from the fact that he is scared to death of squandering that power, of letting things get by. Some say his relentlessness makes him a burnout candidate, but Tedford says he’s just being himself--and only laments that his obsession with improving his team keeps him from working out regularly. “It is what it is,” he says. “There have been times when, at 12:30 in the morning, you throw in one more reel of tape and, bang, you’ve found it.” Witnessing Tedford and his staff in the morning, red-eyed and sucking down coffee, tailback Williams says he has learned something else: “I’m definitely not going to be a football coach when I’m older.” |
| ||||||||||||||
| About
CAA Contact
Us
Update
your Address CAA Career Opportunities Privacy Policy |
©2009 California Alumni
Association. All Rights Reserved For questions about CAA: info@alumni.berkeley.edu Technical inquiries: web@alumni.berkeley.edu
|
Alumni House Berkeley, CA 94720-7520 Toll-Free: (888) CAL-ALUM Phone: (510) 642-7026 Fax: (510) 642-6252
|
