By BRIAN BAINUM, Register Correspondent
BERKELEY, Calif. — Darkness had fallen on UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium last week when the Cal football team ambled off the field after practice. A few players remained on the field doing extra workouts. Bears wide receiver Robert Jordan was approached by a few local reporters and began to quietly answer questions. Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, Jordan broke off and pointed excitedly high up in the bleachers. It went something like this. “Yeah, I mean, we just prepare the same way for every team and play hard and … whoa,” Jordan exclaimed. “Are you serious? Hey, look at that.” The sophomore motioned to his cousin, tailback Marshawn Lynch. The two gazed up at a trio of raccoons prowling around the empty seats in search of food. When a venue gets to be as old as Memorial, which was built in 1923, more than just wild animals from Strawberry Canyon start to overrun it. Father Time may be the biggest enemy of all, as the field sits on the Hayward fault, which is some day bound to cause even more damage. Some of the stadium’s bleachers are more air than wood. The locker rooms are tiny and, as USC coach Pete Carroll put it, “not the nicest in the world.” All of this for a Cal program trying desperately to gain recruiting clout among such powerhouses Miami, USC and Texas. That is why last week’s unveiling of a $125 million project to renovate the stadium is such a good sign for Bears fans everywhere.
Forget the details and forget the fact that the project won’t be finished until at least 2008. Finally, Tedford can point to something tangible when he tries to attract top recruits. And for those who think snazzy facilities don’t matter, think again.
Kyle Wright, a product of Napa’s St. John’s Catholic school in 7th grade, starred at Monte Vista Christian High school in Danville, the same town Tedford lives in. Wright — who is emerging as one of the nation’s top quarterbacks at Miami and threw a school record-tying five touchdown passes in a 47-17 win over Wake Forest this past Saturday — said a few years ago that the aging facilities at Cal were a deterrent for him. The antiquated stadium in Berkeley was enough to turn the kid away, even though the program’s coach has turned six players into first-round NFL draft picks and lived in his home town. Does it make you think of how much better the Bears would be with Wright than they are now with Joe Ayoob?
“Seventeen-year-old kids are very impressionable,” Tedford said. “When they go into very nice facilities, it makes an impression on them. It sticks with them.” Winning games also sticks with high school stars. Unfortunately for Tedford, that is something his team has struggled to do as of late. Cal heads into this Saturday’s Big Game having lost four of its last five games. But with stadium plans revealed, the chances of landing high profile recruits to help bridge the talent gap between the Bears and USC — a gap that was very evident in the Trojans’ 35-10 romp last week — could diminish slowly, but surely. Obviously, good news on the renovation of Memorial Stadium will not help Cal win this weekend against Stanford.
But now there is a greater chance that the Bears will be able to court quarterbacks of Wright’s caliber ... and keep the raccoons off the practice field.
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