Tucson Citizen: 'Genius' label does fit Tedford

ANTHONY GIMINO

Tucson Citizen

A Google search for "Jeff Tedford" and "genius" returns about 780 hits. The same search in Mike Stoops' name finds about half of that. It's completely unscientific, of course, but Tedford, Cal's coach, does get put on high. Sometimes the references are not limited to genius. It's uber-genius. Or genius-in-residence. Stoops, Arizona's coach, is a whiz kid in his own right, but he is a former defensive coordinator in the Land of the Flying Pigskin. The pass-happy Pacific-10 Conference has half its teams averaging more than 43 points per game, and while those numbers are inflated by nonconference games against inferior foes, the pace might not drop off dramatically. "I don't think it will soon, the way these teams are going," Oregon State coach Mike Riley said. "There is some awfully good personnel and schemes going in this league. It will be some rough sledding for defenses in this league." As Stoops begins his second season of Pac-10 play - today against the genius who is Tedford - he and his defensive staff will have to outcoach, out-scheme and outwork some of the best offenses in the nation in order for the Wildcats to survive. Only three head coaches in the Pac-10 truly made their name on the defensive side of the ball - USC's Pete Carroll, Washington State's Bill Doba and Stoops. When Carroll started at USC in 2001, he had the benefit of offensive coordinator Norm Chow, perhaps "the greatest assistant coach in the history of college football," Carroll said. Together they constructed what Carroll now calls "the USC offense" ... or what everybody else calls it: "un-bleepin' believable." Doba was a longtime assistant coach under Mike Price, so when Price ill-fatedly left for Alabama, Doba just needed to do maintenance on the Cougs' proven one-back offense. Defensive man Stoops and his offensive coordinator, Mike Canales, have had to come the farthest. They took over a UA offense that had ranked last, ninth and eighth in scoring in Pac-10 games the previous three seasons. Meanwhile, Cal has averaged 34.6 points per Pac-10 game in three-plus seasons under Tedford, whose special brand of genius comes from superb play-calling, misdirection and disguising the same play for use by different formations. With Tedford, one play logically leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another. "They do a lot of things to see how you react, to set you up," UA safety Darrell Brooks said.  So, give Tedford his genius due. But in the Pac-10, it's basically genius versus genius every week. Sometimes, the defensive genius wins.