Can Cal Rebuild?

Farewell to days of Golden Bear slumbers.

A beast has been roused.

California football, led by third-year Coach Jeff Tedford, is ranked seventh in the country and heads south Saturday with a team that might be the equal of No. 1 USC.

On Telegraph Avenue, “Ted heads” have joined “dead heads” and Berkeley buzz these days has as much to do with the quarterback as the caffeine.

Seventy-five years after Roy Riegels, Cal is running the right way.

As you might imagine, Cal fans are thrilled beyond big words.

“I think most people are terrified,” says Adam Duritz, Cal sports fanatic and lead singer for the Counting Crows.

A theory holds that Cal football has gotten so good so fast under Tedford, improving from 1-10 in 2001 to “wow” now, that the school will botch another opportunity.

Bubbling beneath the team’s top-10 ranking is a bureaucratic ball of tangled yarn involving the renovation of 82-year-old Memorial Stadium, a must-happen project to keep Tedford from jumping to a situation where potable water is not an issue.

In other words, what’s new?

For years, coaching Cal football has been a springboard to better jobs.

At pivotal moments of hope in history, Cal coaches have assessed the situation and bailed.

Blame it on politics, indifference, free speech, an aging stadium under constant watch by seismologists, or the gentle tug of greener ($$$) pastures.

After his team finished 10-2 in 1991, Coach Bruce Snyder left Cal for Arizona State, and in 1996, seemingly on the brink of another breakthrough, Steve Mariucci crossed a career bridge when he came to it (the San Mateo) and left to coach the San Francisco 49ers.

“I would think right now is an absolutely critical juncture in Cal football,” former Cal quarterback Mike Pawlawski bluntly states.

Pawlawski was a star on Snyder’s 1991 team and it grieves him still that Snyder was allowed to slip away.

“It’s an absolute comparison,” Pawlawski says of Snyder and Tedford. “We’re at a crossroads. I would like to see these kids here have the opportunity to get it right. We didn’t get it right the last time.”

It is conceded that Cal loves Tedford and Tedford loves Cal and that the program, with Tedford, is poised to remain a national power or, without him, drift back to woebegone days.

To date, though, no shovel has broken ground on the massive facilities renovation project -- cost estimates are up to $170 million -- everyone says is imperative to keeping Tedford. Meanwhile, Cal officials solicit sugar-daddy donors and contemplate plans that have not advanced beyond “artist renderings.”

Tedford, 42, has shown patience, acting like a man content with his station in life.

“I’m not here to hold anyone hostage,” he says of the facilities issues.

He professes no burning desire to coach in the NFL, and proved it last year by declining an offer from the Chicago Bears.

Yet, Tedford has trigger mechanisms in his contract tied to facilities improvements. His buyout will decrease from $1 million to $500,000 if ground isn’t broken by the end of the year. The buyout goes to zero at the end of 2005.

There appears no way Cal will meet this year’s deadline.

Tedford says all he wants is to see progress.

“This is not a steppingstone, whatsoever,” he says. “This is a place we’d love to be. That being said, though, we’re not interested in being mediocre.”

Tedford’s credibility is at stake because he has promised incoming recruits new facilities.

While Oregon players lounge in state-of-the-art facilities (thank you, Nike founder Phil Knight), Cal players use a broomstick to change the channels of their clubhouse television.

To complicate matters, the university is breaking in a new chancellor and a new athletic director, and they are just getting up to speed on renovation issues.

Sandy Barbour, the incoming athletic director, started official duties Oct. 1.

Barbour arrived to Cal from Notre Dame, where she served as deputy director of athletics, so she knows a little about football issues.

“We can’t waste our time,” Barbour says. “There is no dragging our feet, putzing around. We need to get after it, but we need to be prudent.”

While Tedford’s potent offense keeps the scoreboard humming, Cal is dealing with another ticking clock.

“We’re in a holding pattern because of the new leadership,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to write a check for 20 million right now if I didn’t know who I was writing it to or what for.”

Story of His Life

What Cal might lose in Tedford is what scares Cal most.

He has already proven to be the right guy, at the right school, at the right time.

People used to say about Bear Bryant, “He could take his’n and beat your’n and take your’n and beat his’n.”

In 2002, Tedford’s first season as a head coach, he led a 1-10 Cal team he’d inherited to a 7-5 record. Last year, Cal finished 8-6, was the only team to beat USC, and came within a few big plays of its first Rose Bowl bid since 1958.

Tedford’s ability to nurture young quarterbacks is incontrovertible. While an assistant at Fresno State, he honed the skills of Trent Dilfer and David Carr. At Oregon, he helped develop Akili Smith and Joey Harrington, and at Cal, in one year, Tedford transformed beaten-down Kyle Boller into a first-round Baltimore Raven.

Aaron Rodgers, Tedford’s latest project and next first-round pick, was discovered at Butte Community College.

Cal fans are banking on Tedford’s atypical core beliefs outweighing financial temptations from future suitors.

Cynics ask how Tedford could turn down more money to stay at Cal?

Tedford says he has a wife and two teenage boys and “the last thing I want to do is move my family all around the country. This is selfish enough, without putting them in a lot of different areas.”

Tedford apparently believes coaching college kids is his calling.

When freshmen gather each year for “story night,” Tedford tells his story first, just so, as he explains, “they understand Coach has problems too.”

Tedford’s story starts, “My father was an alcoholic ... “

When a recruit from a tough background says, “Coach, you don’t understand,” Tedford says, “Maybe I do.”

Tedford acknowledges his rise -- from a single-parent home in Downey to head coach at Cal -- as improbable.

He is allergic to introspection, yet does not deny the lightning-bolt moments that helped define him.

Tedford’s father left the family when Jeff was 10. With his mother supporting five children, Jeff was left to roam the streets without supervision. He describes himself as a “goof-off” kid when it came to school -- but he was a talented quarterback.

Tedford worked his way up from Warren High to Cerritos College to Fresno State, where he played for Jim Sweeney.

After a stint in the Canadian Football League ended, though, Tedford returned to Fresno and an uncertain future.

He spent the 1987 season as an unpaid assistant coach at Fresno State under Sweeney.

‘I had zero money, zero,” Tedford recalls. “I’ll never forget walking to the store with my wife and kid and we wanted to buy a pack of cookies and we couldn’t afford to get this one pack of cookies. We had to get the 99-cent pack.”

Tedford abandoned his dream of coaching and took a temporary job as a window washer, then was hired by a cardboard box company. The job paid $23,000 a year.

“That’s a lot of cookies,” Tedford jokes now.

Calgary called with an assistant-coaching offer, but Tedford, now Mr. Responsible Family Man, turned it down.

One day, though, driving home from work, he thought to himself, “I screwed this up. I’m sitting behind a desk, learning about boxes. This isn’t me doing this. “

He arrived home and learned that Calgary had called again, offering Tedford one last chance to consider its offer.

Bells went off in Tedford’s head and ... he took the job. From Calgary, he moved on to assistant-coaching stints at Fresno State and Oregon and, now, his $1-million job at Cal.

Tedford’s life was anything but easy.

He says his dad attended two of his games growing up and never came close to mouthing the words, “I love you.”

Yet, Tedford made it.

It is not coincidence that 25 Cal players are from single-family homes.

He says he and his father speak “every now and then” and adds, “I don’t hold grudges. Who knows what I would have done if I walked in his shoes? I’ve got my own life to live and my own family to take care of.”

Bear Necessities

In one of the Counting Crows’ most popular songs, Duritz sings, “I want to be Bob Dylan.”

These days, Duritz may be leaning more toward Tedford.

A Berkeley grad, Duritz is fixated on Cal football.

Saturday, after Cal’s 49-7 rout of Oregon State at Corvallis, Duritz served as a background vocalist as he joined players in the post-victory frolic, “You tell the whole darn world this is Bear territory.”

In the corridor outside the visitors’ locker room, Tedford greeted Duritz with -- what else? -- a Bear hug.

Unlike Cal fans who fear the worst, Duritz is an optimist when it comes to keeping Tedford.

“I think Jeff loves being at Cal,” Duritz says. “We have to get a stadium built, but we have to do that anyways.... I don’t think he is one of those guys that has to do the next ambitious thing; has to be a pro coach, go to a bigger college. He loves teaching kids and you see it.

“I think he loves this job, at this university....”

Soon, though, someone needs to put boot to shovel and turn over earthworms.

Barbour insists, “It’s beholden upon us not to squander this fabulous opportunity.”

In the interim, the 49ers’ job may open, and, by year’s end, the University of Washington could be looking for a new coach.

Come December, no doubt, intermediaries will contact Tedford’s agent with enticing offers.

“That’s the worst time of year for me,” Tedford says. “I hate that.”

Tedford is confident things will get done and he’ll stay at Cal for years beyond this Saturday.

As always, with Cal, time will tell.

“Let’s give it a chance,” Tedford says. “Let’s give it an honest chance.”

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Go Coach Cal

University of California football coaches since 1960:

*--* Coach Years W L T Win % NFL Ties MARV 1960-1963 8 29 3 238 Coached Buffalo Bills to four LEVY Super Bowls RAY 1964-1971 40 42 1 488 Coached St. Louis Cardinals in WILLSE 1961 Y MIKE 1972-1977 34 31 1 523 Raider head coach two years, 16 WHITE in NFL ROGER 1978-1981 17 28 0 378 QB coach with San Diego Chargers THEDER JOE 1982-1986 20 34 1 373 QB led Minnesota Vikings to KAPP Super Bowl BRUCE 1987-1991 29 24 4 544 Assistant coach with Los SNYDER Angeles Rams KEITH 1992-1995 20 26 0 435 Assistant coach with Seattle GILBER Seahawks TSON STEVE 1996 6 6 0 500 Head coach for S.F. 49ers, MARIUC Detroit Lions CI TOM 1997-2001 16 39 0 291 Player, coach with S.F. 49ers HOLMOE (4 rings) JEFF 2002- 18 11 0 621 None; assistant in CFL with TEDFOR Calgary D

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