Coach Tedford's story is indeed Shakespearean. He brought the Cal faithful to heights unheard of for over half a century, and then the rabble rose up and turned him out.
Do we at Cal eat our own? Was this tragedy avoidable?
When we look back at this 20 years from now (I mean when you do, I'll be dead), I'm guessing that the root cause of this tragedy can be found, not at the Head Coaching level but at the highest levels of the Universityin the Chancellor's office. More on that later.
To understand any human tragedy, turn to Ecclesiastes. (No, not "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but chance and circumstance happeneth to them all." )
Though that classic line applies here, check out the ironic, "He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it;"
It is so apropos.
Tedford built the Stadiumdug it if you will--(ok, Barkley Simpson and other g Bears really built it)--and it brought him downnot necessarily in the way you think.
Were we in the old stadium, drawing 29,000 fans, would Coach Tedford have lost his job? Maybethe academic angle was huge.
But, if he lost his job, he wouldn't have lost it because there were too few splinters in the backsides of fans in the bleachers.
Actually, what did him in was demon rum.
Someone assumed that since certain Alumni and Alumnae were contributing five and six figure amounts, they deserved a small rewardlike protection from the capricious outdoor elements plus free food and worse, but bestfree booze.
I experienced this for the first time during the ASU fiasco.
It was during that game that I realized cooking Tedford's goose would occur in a marinade of Grey Goose. The last thing a head coach needs is a bunch of alumni grousing over the team's performance where a lot of booze is being consumed.
If you think a gaggle of wives have opinions about their husbands, try a bevy besotted alumni (nattering nabobs of negativism) talking about a head coach.
Fortified with John Barley Corn, we suddenly have the courage to, not only express those opinions over and overbut do it rather loudly. Cue the Mo!
(Few people realize that the sacred section CC was first populated by Marty Cullom and some other coaches' wives back in the early 60's because they couldn't stand hearing fans criticize their husbands from their seats on GG).
Fans criticize coaches. It's what we doeverywhere
And being Cal Grads, though Eccesiastes said "There is nothing new under the sun" being wise, he also must have said, "Cal Grads think they know everything under the sun."
Just as there is a time for every season, a time to live and a time to die, a time to reap and a time to sowas football fans we know there is a time to run, and a time to pass, a time to kick away and a time to fake it, a time to go for one and a time to go for two.
We can't understand why the coach doesn't know what we know. We could do his job with our eyes closed and half our brain tied behind our backwhich is how we sound most of the time.
It was never about wins and losses. It was about what it means to don the Blue and Gold. I got an e-mail last week from "The Beaser", John Beasley former tight end for Cal who played in the Super Bowl for the Vikings.
I wear my Blue & Gold proudly back here, as well as my Vikings' 1969 NFL Championship ring. [U]But, my most prized possession is my CAL diploma! [/U]
People not connected with Cal (Read current the coaching staff, most administrators and the Chancellor) don't get that.
They pay lip service to it, but they don't get it.
Cal is different. We don't always have to win, but we have to be DIFFERENT from other schools. We have to be able to take pride in our kids.
(Maybe that's just our excuse for certain losses, but it's what keeps us going).
Do kids today have any thought (or are they taught the significance of playing on the field where Andy Smith's ashes are scattered? Would it matter?).
I get e-mails from Jim Burress who captained the Bears (and from '59 to '61 never won more than two games in a season). He had the honor of greeting President Kennedy, when he told 83,000 in Memorial Stadium that there "was more brain power currently at Cal, than in the history of the world with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone at the White House."
Not sure the Crimson Tide's captain has a recollection like that. It's one of those little things that sets us apart.
As a kid, I witnessed all those losses in the mid 50's and 60's but LOVED the Bears. There was always next year!
THE PLAY stands head and shoulders above all the rest, but ours is a culture of amazing memories, (Bradley beating Penn State on a pass from Hunt with .01 seconds before the snapresulting in the hiring of a kid, Joe Paterno; Sweeny beating Stanford State on the last play of the last game of the last season; Marc Hicks single handedly decimating SC; Coming from Behind to beat Oregon 42-43 in '93the list goes on and on.
In between those games have been some horrendous losses, but it was never about W's. It was about how Cal played football.
It varies from year to year, but my memory is that at least we were "tough." Willsey used to say we could beat anyoneif we played in a telephone booth. In '67 (or was it '68) I was told not one team beat us the following Saturday, no matter the outcome against us. They were just too physically beat up to play well (have never made the effort to see whether that's true or not, but he principal remains the same).
Like Pete Newell's NCAA champs we were never the bestwe just worked harder and were toughplus like the Beaser we were proud of that diploma, and like Burress, we were in an environment where we might shake President Kennedy's hand. WE WERE DIFFERENT.
That difference, eased the pain of losing.
From 1959 to 1969 I watched from the stands (or sat on the bench) while Cal won 38 and lost 70. The stadium was not fullusually around 30,000 (except for Big Game, the southern Schools and an Ohio State or Notre Dame). It was glorious. We were proud to be Bears. Next year it would be better.
And we were graduating young adults.
Give Tedford credit. He spoiled us. He showed we could compete at the highest levels. We came to expect that.
And when we didn't--it hurt. We could have lived with the defeats, had we been "exceptional"exceptionally toughover achieversgutsy guys who pulled off unexpected upsetsgreat sportsmankids who graduated--the list goes on.
Now Tedford is not to blame for this (see opening paragraph). I blame the Chancellor and Sandy Barbour. They sent a terrible message when they demoted the finest program on campus, Rugby, and kept (for example) soccer. Their message was "excellence doesn't matter." They were not there to reward success. What counted was political correctness and money. It was a terrible message to send to the campus community. Tedford never should have bought into it.
(Back when we had a good relationship I asked Sandy why Rugby was demoted and not soccersame number of kids, roughly same budget. "The Directors Cup," she replied.
I can still see Ronald Regan saying on his death bed, "Rock, sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Directors Cup."
How stupid was I.
So Tedford followed the values of the Chancellor and ADwhat matters is money (out of state students at the expense of in state kids, professors like Barsky teaching classes like "how to photograph student demonstrations" , or classes like my daughter took where the final was making sock dolls for an Afghan Orphanage).
He was trained by them that excellence doesn't matterrevenue does.
(So if the Chancellor and Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott ask for a sacrificial lamb, La 'Affare Lupois occurs. Can you imagine Ray Willsey, Pete Newell, Joe Kapp, or Bruce Snider not accepting responsibility and blaming it on a 27 year old assistant coach?)
Remmber Papa Warren's favorite poem:
You don't go down with a short hard fall, you just short of shuffle along,
'till you lighten your load with the moral code and you can't tell right from wrong.
That is just Un-Cal to some of us. We were raised on the pursuit of excellenceeven if our teams lost.
That mentality permeated the campus and affected the football program. How I would have loved to have seen Tedford (and Montgomery) step up and say, "Hey, we're all Bears here. We'll cut 5% off our programs so you don't have to decimate winning programs where kids graduate (like Rugby).
But that was/is not part of the culture anymore. I doubt Brutus Hamilton, Nibs Price, or Pappy Waldorf would have allowed baseball to be axed.
But I'm a Luddite. I see the world differently than the out-of-staters running things today.
It's a new world. For some of us, that is a tragedy. From white helmets to the essence of what it means to buckle up for Cal, the program lost its way. That wasn't the coaches fault. It was ours.
We could have created an atmosphere where he would have succeeded, and due to leadership (or lack there of) from on high, we hurt a good manwho ended up hurting a storied program.
Do we at Cal eat our own? Was this tragedy avoidable?
When we look back at this 20 years from now (I mean when you do, I'll be dead), I'm guessing that the root cause of this tragedy can be found, not at the Head Coaching level but at the highest levels of the Universityin the Chancellor's office. More on that later.
To understand any human tragedy, turn to Ecclesiastes. (No, not "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but chance and circumstance happeneth to them all." )
Though that classic line applies here, check out the ironic, "He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it;"
It is so apropos.
Tedford built the Stadiumdug it if you will--(ok, Barkley Simpson and other g Bears really built it)--and it brought him downnot necessarily in the way you think.
Were we in the old stadium, drawing 29,000 fans, would Coach Tedford have lost his job? Maybethe academic angle was huge.
But, if he lost his job, he wouldn't have lost it because there were too few splinters in the backsides of fans in the bleachers.
Actually, what did him in was demon rum.
Someone assumed that since certain Alumni and Alumnae were contributing five and six figure amounts, they deserved a small rewardlike protection from the capricious outdoor elements plus free food and worse, but bestfree booze.
I experienced this for the first time during the ASU fiasco.
It was during that game that I realized cooking Tedford's goose would occur in a marinade of Grey Goose. The last thing a head coach needs is a bunch of alumni grousing over the team's performance where a lot of booze is being consumed.
If you think a gaggle of wives have opinions about their husbands, try a bevy besotted alumni (nattering nabobs of negativism) talking about a head coach.
Fortified with John Barley Corn, we suddenly have the courage to, not only express those opinions over and overbut do it rather loudly. Cue the Mo!
(Few people realize that the sacred section CC was first populated by Marty Cullom and some other coaches' wives back in the early 60's because they couldn't stand hearing fans criticize their husbands from their seats on GG).
Fans criticize coaches. It's what we doeverywhere
And being Cal Grads, though Eccesiastes said "There is nothing new under the sun" being wise, he also must have said, "Cal Grads think they know everything under the sun."
Just as there is a time for every season, a time to live and a time to die, a time to reap and a time to sowas football fans we know there is a time to run, and a time to pass, a time to kick away and a time to fake it, a time to go for one and a time to go for two.
We can't understand why the coach doesn't know what we know. We could do his job with our eyes closed and half our brain tied behind our backwhich is how we sound most of the time.
It was never about wins and losses. It was about what it means to don the Blue and Gold. I got an e-mail last week from "The Beaser", John Beasley former tight end for Cal who played in the Super Bowl for the Vikings.
I wear my Blue & Gold proudly back here, as well as my Vikings' 1969 NFL Championship ring. [U]But, my most prized possession is my CAL diploma! [/U]
People not connected with Cal (Read current the coaching staff, most administrators and the Chancellor) don't get that.
They pay lip service to it, but they don't get it.
Cal is different. We don't always have to win, but we have to be DIFFERENT from other schools. We have to be able to take pride in our kids.
(Maybe that's just our excuse for certain losses, but it's what keeps us going).
Do kids today have any thought (or are they taught the significance of playing on the field where Andy Smith's ashes are scattered? Would it matter?).
I get e-mails from Jim Burress who captained the Bears (and from '59 to '61 never won more than two games in a season). He had the honor of greeting President Kennedy, when he told 83,000 in Memorial Stadium that there "was more brain power currently at Cal, than in the history of the world with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone at the White House."
Not sure the Crimson Tide's captain has a recollection like that. It's one of those little things that sets us apart.
As a kid, I witnessed all those losses in the mid 50's and 60's but LOVED the Bears. There was always next year!
THE PLAY stands head and shoulders above all the rest, but ours is a culture of amazing memories, (Bradley beating Penn State on a pass from Hunt with .01 seconds before the snapresulting in the hiring of a kid, Joe Paterno; Sweeny beating Stanford State on the last play of the last game of the last season; Marc Hicks single handedly decimating SC; Coming from Behind to beat Oregon 42-43 in '93the list goes on and on.
In between those games have been some horrendous losses, but it was never about W's. It was about how Cal played football.
It varies from year to year, but my memory is that at least we were "tough." Willsey used to say we could beat anyoneif we played in a telephone booth. In '67 (or was it '68) I was told not one team beat us the following Saturday, no matter the outcome against us. They were just too physically beat up to play well (have never made the effort to see whether that's true or not, but he principal remains the same).
Like Pete Newell's NCAA champs we were never the bestwe just worked harder and were toughplus like the Beaser we were proud of that diploma, and like Burress, we were in an environment where we might shake President Kennedy's hand. WE WERE DIFFERENT.
That difference, eased the pain of losing.
From 1959 to 1969 I watched from the stands (or sat on the bench) while Cal won 38 and lost 70. The stadium was not fullusually around 30,000 (except for Big Game, the southern Schools and an Ohio State or Notre Dame). It was glorious. We were proud to be Bears. Next year it would be better.
And we were graduating young adults.
Give Tedford credit. He spoiled us. He showed we could compete at the highest levels. We came to expect that.
And when we didn't--it hurt. We could have lived with the defeats, had we been "exceptional"exceptionally toughover achieversgutsy guys who pulled off unexpected upsetsgreat sportsmankids who graduated--the list goes on.
Now Tedford is not to blame for this (see opening paragraph). I blame the Chancellor and Sandy Barbour. They sent a terrible message when they demoted the finest program on campus, Rugby, and kept (for example) soccer. Their message was "excellence doesn't matter." They were not there to reward success. What counted was political correctness and money. It was a terrible message to send to the campus community. Tedford never should have bought into it.
(Back when we had a good relationship I asked Sandy why Rugby was demoted and not soccersame number of kids, roughly same budget. "The Directors Cup," she replied.
I can still see Ronald Regan saying on his death bed, "Rock, sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Directors Cup."
How stupid was I.
So Tedford followed the values of the Chancellor and ADwhat matters is money (out of state students at the expense of in state kids, professors like Barsky teaching classes like "how to photograph student demonstrations" , or classes like my daughter took where the final was making sock dolls for an Afghan Orphanage).
He was trained by them that excellence doesn't matterrevenue does.
(So if the Chancellor and Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott ask for a sacrificial lamb, La 'Affare Lupois occurs. Can you imagine Ray Willsey, Pete Newell, Joe Kapp, or Bruce Snider not accepting responsibility and blaming it on a 27 year old assistant coach?)
Remmber Papa Warren's favorite poem:
You don't go down with a short hard fall, you just short of shuffle along,
'till you lighten your load with the moral code and you can't tell right from wrong.
That is just Un-Cal to some of us. We were raised on the pursuit of excellenceeven if our teams lost.
That mentality permeated the campus and affected the football program. How I would have loved to have seen Tedford (and Montgomery) step up and say, "Hey, we're all Bears here. We'll cut 5% off our programs so you don't have to decimate winning programs where kids graduate (like Rugby).
But that was/is not part of the culture anymore. I doubt Brutus Hamilton, Nibs Price, or Pappy Waldorf would have allowed baseball to be axed.
But I'm a Luddite. I see the world differently than the out-of-staters running things today.
It's a new world. For some of us, that is a tragedy. From white helmets to the essence of what it means to buckle up for Cal, the program lost its way. That wasn't the coaches fault. It was ours.
We could have created an atmosphere where he would have succeeded, and due to leadership (or lack there of) from on high, we hurt a good manwho ended up hurting a storied program.
