Friday, December 29, 2006

Five Years Into The Tedford Era - Priceless!

Notwithstanding the bitter disappointment of the Arizona loss keeping the Bears out of the Rose Bowl, it was another wonderful year for Jeff Tedford's California Golden Bears. 10-3, a record that would have been unthinkable five short years ago, now seems vaguely disappointing to many, including the nattering nabobs on ESPN (although to their credit, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit did a great job last night emphasizing the significance of Cal's accomplishments under Tedford) who seem to view anything other than a conference championship and a BCS bid as failure. Hey, I got news for you jerks! We suffered through EIGHT STRAIGHT LOSING SEASONS and looked bad doing it before Tedford got there! These have been glorious years, and a Rose Bowl bid would just be icing on the cake.

Even though the touchdown at the end was unnecessary (and that was a great shot of Tedford grabbing quarterback Steve Levy by the face mask to make sure the point got across), the 45-10 blowout win over a good Texas A&M team was an important one - the Bears had faded in November, and hadn't looked consistently strong on both sides of the ball since mid-October. This is something that's now happened two seasons in a row, and whether it's lack of depth or bad conditioning (which I doubt), I suspect it will be something that Tedford works on next year.

In the meantime...ROLL ON YOU BEARS!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Word here in Portland is that Ducks coach Mike Belloti is being pushed up to AD, a job recently vacated, afer a disappointing season and dismal bowl game and that Tedford, unhappy with unraveling of the new facilities agreement which bound him to Cal--perhaps he hasn't come to terms with what they call the "culture" in Berkeley--is anxious to return to Eugene, where Nike is a great recruiter.

I've spoken to a couple of self-styled insiders who are predicting big changes at Oregon and Cal...

Hope we can hold on to Tedford but am skeptical, if any university can screw this up it's ours.