Unless you’ve been stuck in the basement of Etcheverry for a matter of months, you know that the brand-spanking-new Memorial Stadium is playing host to our football team from here on out. The presumed hope was that the shiny new arena would somehow increase the level of play from the somewhat disappointing record of last season. With Saturday’s 22-point beatdown in Salt Lake City, many are calling for the dismissal of the man at the helm – Jeff Tedford.
Cal athletics is a matter of pride for our student body. Most of us go to games, stand in the student section for what seems like eternity, and keep up with how star players are doing every so often. Whether you’re a casual fan who can at least tell the difference between a basketball and a football, or a diehard who commits each box score to memory, sports is one of the few things that can cause more debate among people than politics can – and that’s saying something in Berkeley. We can all identify with the glory of winning versus the not-so-good feeling of coming up short. It’s quite comical how the latter is so quick to eliminate the memory of the former.
Now, a lot of people who have forgotten or weren’t around to see the man’s complete résumé are the ones who believe that Tedford should go. Even though we’ve been considered winners in academia for a long while – an envy of Stanford, to be sure – we hadn’t been quite so good at the most popular sport in America. If you’ve been chuckling at the team’s record at the end of each season in your time as a student here, you’d have been in hysterics at the one-win season eleven years ago. Because, you know, the only thing worse than one is zero. And fortunately, Cal doesn’t own the rights to one of the 87 ignominious winless seasons in college football history. But after suffering through nine losing seasons, Tedford was the man, the myth, and the legend who would bring the glory back.
So after being the Coach of the Year in his two of his first three years, leading the Bears to seven straight bowl games, and staying competitive in the national rankings for a good amount of time, he’s not all that bad. He’s seen win streaks as high as eight games, and coached future superstars like Aaron Rodgers. He’s won four bowl games and been robbed of a chance to play in another. Maybe it’s just because he played for a certain Clogger’s hometown Cerritos College Falcons once upon a time, but a couple of rough seasons doesn’t erase an entire decade. When a guy sleeps on an air mattress in his office on weekdays, you have to respect the man who brought the renaissance of football back to the Golden Bears.
Image source: John Martinez Pavliga under Creative Commons