The Cal 100: No. 58 -- Jeff Tedford
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 58: Jeff Tedford
Cal Sports Connection: Tedford was Cal’s head football coach from 2002 through 2012.
Claim to Fame: He won more games than any Cal football coach in history, won more bowl games than any Cal coach in history, coached the Golden Bears to their only conference title in the past 47 years, and led Cal to a No. 4 ranking in the final regular-season polls in 2004.
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What Jeff Tedford is most known for is not that he won more Cal football games than any head football coach in history, or that he earned more bowl berths and more bowl-game victories than any Cal coach in history, or that he molded six quarterbacks into first-round NFL draft choices, or that he was the only Cal coach since 1975 to claim a conference title.
No, Tedford’s spot in Cal lore is highlighted by his decisions in the 2004 season not to run up the score and not to engage in politicking on his team’s behalf, decisions for which is both criticized and lauded.
Tedford, an introverted man with a remarkable offensive mind, is still a college head coach at age 61 at his alma mater, Fresno State.
But he made his name at Cal, his first head coaching job. The year before Tedford arrived in 2002, the Golden Bears had gone 1-10, which was their eighth straight losing season.
Cal went 7-5 in his first season, and went to bowl games in eight of his 11 seasons as head coach, winning five of those postseason games. It would have been nine bowls, but Cal was ineligible in 2002 because of violations of a previous regime.
Cal’s very first offensive play in Tedford’s first game as the Golden Bears’ head coach in 2002 was a trick play that resulted in a 71-yard touchdown pass, leading to a 70-22 victory over Baylor.
Kyle Boller was transformed into star in 2002, becoming one of the six quarterbacks Tedford molded into first-round NFL draft picks, joining Trent Dilfer, David Carr, Joey Harrington, Akili Smith and Aaron Rodgers.
Rodgers was the centerpiece of Tedford’s 2004 team, arguably the best Cal team since 1950. The Golden Bears’ only regular-season loss that season came on the road against eventual national champion USC after the Bears, trailing by six, failed to score after getting a first down at the Trojans’ 9-yard line with 1:47 left.
The Bears finished the season with a 26-16 road victory over Southern Mississippi. Cal had a first down at the Southern Miss 25-yard line with 1:33 remaining, but Tedford opted to run out the clock rather than try for a touchdown that would have made the final score a more convincing 33-16. Tedford was more about integrity and not getting anyone hurt, but did it cost Cal a Rose Bowl berth?
Cal was ranked No. 4 in both polls and the BCS standings before that game, and BCS rules at the time allowed a team that finished in the top four of the final BCS standings to earn one of the four BCS bowl berths, which would have been the Rose Bowl for Cal.
The BCS standings were based on three elements, the voting points in the media poll, the voting points in the coaches poll and a compilation of several computers rankings.
Although Cal remained fourth in both final regular-season polls, the relatively close win against Southern Miss and some public politicking by Texas head coach Mack Brown caused Cal to lose some voting points from the previous week in both polls. That, combined with Cal’s No. 6 ranking in the computers, pushed Texas ahead of Cal for the No. 4 BCS slot even though the Longhorns were No. 6 in the final AP poll and No. 5 in the coaches poll.
The fact that Tedford did not publicly boast about Cal’s accomplishments the way Brown did is believed to have swayed enough voters away from the Bears to make the difference.
“I was a young naïve coach and not into politicking,” Tedford said in 2021.
Instead Cal went to the Holiday Bowl and lost to Texas Tech.
In 2006, Cal tied USC for the Pac-10 championship, the only time since 1975 that the Bears claimed a conference title.
Photo of Jeff Tedford courtesy of Cal Athletics
Tedford was fired after a 3-9 season in 2012, and became an offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2014 before heart problems ended that venture. He was also the head coach of the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League for one season (2015).
In 2017 he became head coach at Fresno State, taking over a team that had gone 1-11 the previous season and leading it to a 10-4 record in his first season. The Bulldogs won the Mountain West championship the next season before heart issues interfered again and he resigned after the 2019 season.
Surgeries seemed to solve Tedford’s heart problems and he returned as Fresno State’s head coach in 2022, leading the Bulldogs to another conference championship and a bowl victory over Washington State.
The Cal 100: No. 59 -- Eddie Hart
Cover photo of Aaron Rodgers and Jeff Tedford courtesy of Cal Athletics
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