He himself says that facilities is something of an “arms race” in recruiting.

So I don’t see him saying it will get us the best recruits. I think he’s saying it was a huge knock against us before and now it’ll put is a better position.

I see a different story. I think JT from 2002-2006 ate, slept and dreamt Cal football and, in particular, ran the offense. These were the glory years. Starting in the 2007 season, he started delegating more of the duties. Since then he’s been playing with taking more or less of the offensive duties (game planning, play calling, etc.) and he hasn’t been successful at it.

I disagree with that JT has a play-not-to-lose mentality. I think he plays smart and can be bold and clever as evidenced by his first 5 successful years at Cal. I do think that our playcalling is predictable and sometimes too conservative but not enough to hang JT with. I wonder how much of this is either poor delegation or a poor OC.

I don’t get the sense that JT is complacent with his salary. If all that mattered to him was money, then he would’ve gone to the NFL when he had the chance. I think he wanted to leave his mark on Cal and turn it into a perennially competitive program.

People who say they would retire after making $X million are the type of people who don’t have the passion, will or drive to become the HC of a Div1 football team. If it was so easy to get this kind of money, more people would be doing it. The fact is that a lucky, talented fraction of percentage of coaches ever make it and I doubt they’re looking to cash in on year 1 and then sit back and relax. These are people who are extremely competitive and take a large amount of pride in success on the field.

In Autzen or Corvalis – cold, wet miserable places that California recruits normally want to go and live -having the nicest facilities certainly makes a big difference. Cal can sell itself on having one of the best universities in the nation with a diverse, active and fun lifestyle just outside the campus. Playing in a full house in beautiful Strawberry canyon doesn’t hurt things, either. Tedford has been able to attract great recruits during his tenure, as evidenced by the number of former Cal players in the NFL.

So, no, completing those great new facilities isn’t going to make a huge difference in the Tedford era unless he figures out how to make the already good athletes better on the playing field.

I am fine with giving him another 4 years except that if performance were to continue to slide for the next two years it might be tough to not think about a change.

Let’s see what happens. I think there’s more chance we’ll collectively be singing JT’s praises in two years than there is that we’ll be lamenting two more years of decline in the program.

0 for 4 is not a very good record in QB selection/development, but it would not surprise me to see Tedford’s next guy work out. That’s where we differ, I think, and this is one of the biggest questions that will determine JT’s future and legacy here. Dan, you see the recent evidence and conclude that JT is a QB killer. That’s a reasonable conclusion and I certainly can’t prove otherwise.

The bull case is that things didn’t work out for the last 4 Cal QBs, but that it’s not because Tedford is actually a poor evaluator/developer of QB talent. Maybe they weren’t as good as we thought, maybe injuries hurt their chances, JT and/or our OCs didn’t do as good a job as they could, etc….

No one gets it right all the time and 0 for 4 is a tough streak but it could happen even to a good coach.

The bear case is what Dan said — that JT is a QB killer more than a QB guru.

My guess is that JT is in between the two extremes, but that he will find a good QB in the next year. A lot of that is based on hope but I’m a fan so I think that’s okay.

If JT can find us a decent QB by sometime next season and the team can have modest on-field success (i.e. at least make a minor bowl game), then I think there’s a good chance we can gain enough recruiting momentum from the new training center (and stadium retrofit) that the program can get back to where it was and have another shot at breaking though to the next level in a couple of years.

I think what reasonable people may disagree on is how long to give JT before concluding that he’s not the best person for the job (among realistic candidates). I say give him one more cycle (two years minimum, and more if the team is progressing). If at any point the decision is a close one, I say give JT the benefit of the doubt because of how he’s improved the program and how he’s done it with relative class.

Working back to 1958 through the coaches here is the history, with winnng seasons & bowl games if any, given after the coach’s name: Jeff Tedford (8 winning seasons, 7 bowls), Tom Holmoe (none), Steve Mariucci (1 bowl), Keith Gilbertson (1 winning season & bowl), Bruce Snyder (2 winning seasons & bowls), Joe Kapp (1 winning season), Roger Theder (2 winning seasons, 1 bowl), Mike White (3 winning seasons), Ray Willsey (3 winning seasons), Marv Levy (none), Pete Elliott (1 bowl).

In the 44 seasons after 1958 & before JT, Cal only had 12 winning seasons. That is the sorry doormat that JT inherited & turned into a winner, producing 8 winning seasons in 9 years.

Some of the coaches fired by Cal for losing, or bolting for greener pastures, had great success later on at other places. The hostile nickname for Marv Levy was “Marvelous Marv” when he was losing at Cal in the early 60′s. Later on, Marv Levy took the Buffalo Bills to 4 Super Bowls & was inducted as a coach into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Yet even he had not been able to win at Cal. After Cal fired Mike White, he took Illinois to the Rose Bowl. After Bruce Snyder bolted, he took Arizona State to the Rose Bowl. After Steve Mariucci bolted, he took the 49ers to NFL playoff games. In other words, some very good coaches were not able to win much at Cal or get Cal to the Rose Bowl.

By 2006, JT had erased the loser image of Cal football. But then from late that year until September of 2008 Cal became a national joke with the tree-sitters & court order preventing work on the proposed new athletic performance center. When JT took the job in 02 he stressed the need for Cal to catch up with the rest of the Pac Ten in athletic facilities & even made required progress on that part of his contract. The Center is finally supposed to open in September 2011. Not until then will recruits be able to see first class, Big Time training facilities.

JT has been great for Cal. The time to evaluate his long-term performance will be about 2016, after he has had about 4 seasons of recruiting players who on their visit will see training facilities worthy of a Pac Ten school.

Again, let’s see the stadium get paid for under this plan before we throw Tedford a parade. If it comes through, HUGE kudos to him. If not, he’ll be remembered by many in infamy for financial disaster. That’s some serious high stakes poker.

But I have zero confidence that Cal under Tedford can develop a solid QB, let alone another Aaron Rodgers, which is to say a first team All-Pac 10 caliber QB. I think Tedford was once a QB guru, now I believe he is a QB killer. Cal is where promising, talented, highly regarded HS QBs come to fall way short of their, and our, great expectations.

Between Tedford, his demeanor, his revolving door at QB coach and OC, the outdated and unimaginative offense, the doomed play calling, his uptight attitude, his negative thoughts that none of his QBs ever seem to be good enough except the starter … I could go on and on- but between all of that, I, again, have ZERO confidence we will see a top notch QB at Cal while Tedford is here.

The only way I see that changing is if he brings in a new OC who is a genius and an innovator and if Tedford gets way the heck out of the way. Just the way Mike Belotti did with Chip Kelly. This is where I differ greatly from the many posters that feel Tedford needs to go back to be way more hands on with the QBs, the offense, the play calling. I say NO WAY. Old Sourpuss has lost his mojo and doesn’t have it anymore.

Plus, Tedford has admitted several seasons ago that he can’t do all that and be head coach – too many other aspects that fall under his per view get neglected when he is too myopically focused on the QBs and the Offense. And he isn’t going to step down from being the head coach, so it’s not even an option that he becomes way more engaged in the QBs and the offense. He might say he’s going to do it, and he may, but it is a recipe other shortcomings in the program.

As great and naturally gifted as Andrew Luck is, he was good, but not great last season. This season he is so great in every way, it’s ridiculous. He needed development and great coaching to get there, which he has clearly gotten from Harbaugh and his staff. He is better this season without the force of nature that was Toby Gerhardt last season- and wow, that’s mind boggling great.

If Luck were at Cal, don’t you know he’d be a train wreck? In fact, maybe we wouldn’t know he was a train wreck, because he’d be standing on the sideline watching Kevin Riley, Brock Mansion and Beau Sweeney all flail in Tedford’s offense before he ever saw the field in any meaningful minutes. We’d hear how he doesn’t have enough grasp of the offense, or that Riley’s grasp was better than Mansion, whose is better than Sweeney’s grasp … blah, blah, blah.

I believe what I am saying about Luck in the same way I believe – no, make that KNOW – that Tedford would have kicked a FG at the end of the game Saturday to go to OT if he were in in Steve Sarkisian’s shoes.

There is so much off kilter in the program, it gives me a headache thinking about it. So I’m done for a week, off to Montreal and Houston (there’s a business trip for ya). Have fun all of you breaking it down during my hiatus.