Cal's Jeff Tedford knows what it's like to be the new head coach trying to rebuild a team coming off a one-win season.
By Rich Myhre
Herald Writer
SEATTLE - Taking over a 1-10 football team and getting it turned around is no simple assignment. Just ask Tyrone Willingham. Or you could ask Jeff Tedford. Like Willingham, the first-year Washington coach who inherited a team that went 1-10 a year ago, Tedford arrived at California late in 2001 and was asked to restore a football program that was coming off a one-win season. Throughout his new squad, morale was down and doubt was rampant. Recruits, meanwhile, were barely giving Tedford time to make his pitch. Three years later, California finished its regular season with a 10-1 record. Only a loss to Southern California kept the Golden Bears from playing for a national championship.
California opened its 2005 season with a 41-3 victory over Sacramento State, and on Saturday the 16th-ranked Golden Bears improved to 2-0 with a 56-17 drubbing of Washington at Husky Stadium. It was Tedford's fourth straight victory without a loss against Washington. No small accomplishment, given that five California coaches before him were 0-19 against the Huskies. The task that Tedford faced - and that Willingham, now 0-2, faces at Washington - began in the months before his first game. Somehow, he had to stitch together what little was left of his team's pride and confidence. ''The challenge,'' he recalled Saturday, ''was to rebuild self-esteem, and that's very, very important. Because any time a team goes 1-10, those players have zero confidence and zero self-esteem. When we first got here, our big challenge was to create an environment where these players could feel better about themselves. We had to get them believing and trusting in the coaches and in each other.''
Tedford's first California team went 7-5 and the second finished 8-6. The latter team, though, closed with victories in five of its last six games, meaning the Golden Bears have won 17 of their last 20 games over one full season and parts of two others. That kind of turnabout has done wonders for recruiting, though Tedford said his staff is still trying to build credibility among high school prospects. ''That's a definite process,'' he said, ''and we're not quite there yet. For the first year or two, we weren't getting some of the recruits because they didn't think they could win a Pac-10 championship at Cal or play at a national level. We didn't have a chance with some of those recruits because that's how they saw us, and a lot of the local recruits felt like they had to go away to do things like that. ''But now we've slowly turned the corner and we've been able to keep people at home,'' he said. Among the locals who opted for California are two of the team's most exciting players - Bay Area natives and first cousins Marshawn Lynch, a tailback, and wide receiver Robert Jordan. Lynch suffered a hand injury and left Saturday's game in the third quarter, but still had five carries for 46 yards.
Jordan, meanwhile, caused havoc in the Washington secondary, snagging 11 passes for 192 yards and three touchdowns. ''I could have gone to the bigger schools, like Miami,'' Jordan said. ''But I'm a receiver, and I knew by coming to Cal with coach Tedford that I'd always be able to play with a good quarterback. That was important.'' Tedford has also gone after several out-of-state gems, and one the Golden Bears were very happy to sign is linebacker Anthony Felder, a true freshman who lives in Shoreline and graduated from Seattle's O'Dea High School. Tedford, said Felder, ''didn't really sell me on anything. He just told me the facts about the school and about the program. And then when I went and saw what California has to offer, I liked what I saw - a chance for a great education, an up-and-coming football program and an open spot for me.'' What Tedford has accomplished to date at California is a terrific success story, and one Willingham will try to duplicate in the years to come. Tedford's advice? ''It starts immediately,'' Tedford said. ''You can't wait. We didn't come in here thinking we were going to wait until we got our own recruiting classes in. We came in trying to build with the players that we had. They were good players and good guys, and they'd just had some misfortune. ''When you have guys that have been on a 1-10 team,'' he added, ''they're very anxious to be successful. They're really eager to listen to things you have to say. And if you can create that environment where they trust one and another, then you'll get something going.''
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