Filed under: California, Pac 10
How fitting that Cal football coach Jeff Tedford was on the two-lane road heading into Chico for a recruiting trip Wednesday -- just days after his last success story from the same small California college town earned a ticket to the biggest show in sports.Tedford watched his former quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, lead the Green Bay Packers to Super Bowl XLV by winning the NFC Championship Game on Sunday. He watched as a fan, cheering for Rodgers and another former Cal player and Packers linebacker Desmond Bishop. And he watched as a coach.
"I'll break it down, watch tendencies, that kind of thing," Tedford said. "But mostly, I was rooting for him and Des. I was watching both sides of the ball."
Tedford is the coach who discovered Rodgers. Rodgers had not been offered a Division I scholarship and he was playing at Butte College in Chico when Tedford spotted him while there to recruit another player.
Tedford, who had previously mentored Trent Dilfer, Kyle Boller and David Carr, turned Rodgers from an under-regarded passer into a star college quarterback. Rodgers was named the starting quarterback by the fifth game of his debut season at Cal. He led Cal to bowl games at the end of the 2003 and 2004 seasons, finishing 10-1 in 2004, including a loss at USC in which Rodgers tied an NCAA record with 23 consecutive passes completed in one game.
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