Ira Miller had trouble posting this on the Zohn, so I’m doing it for him. Here goes:

I remember speaking with Tedford about Rodgers before the 2005 draft, about the criticism Tedford had received that his quarterbacks don’t succeed in the NFL. The rap at the time was that Tedford coached up his college quarterbacks so well that they had reached their potential, or close to it, by the time they got to the NFL.

We now know, of course, that was bogus. I felt it was a specious argument at the time, which was why I wrote before the 2005 draft that the 49ers should select Rodgers with the first pick. Ted Tollner, a former 49ers’ assistant, said he used to hear the same thing about BYU quarterbacks until Jim McMahon and Steve Young came along.

At any rate, something else that makes all this interesting was the criticism I received for writing that the 49ers should choose Rodgers. One critic, in particular e-mailed me at the Chronicle with this offer: Dinner for two at a restaurant of my choice if Rodgers ever started a game in the NFL for a team in playoff contention, other than as an injury replacement.

I think Rodgers clearly has fulfilled his part of the bargain. I have been trying for three years to get that writer to pay off his offer, but he has welched on it.

So why had previous Tedford quarterbacks failed in the NFL? Well, something he said in a 2005 interview sticks with me. He pointed out that the failure of a quarterback to succeed often involved a lot of other factors (You could make the case, for example, that the failure of Alex Smith, not a Tedford-trained QB, had as much to do with the chaos of the 49ers’ organization as it did with Smith). Said Tedford: “The teams that are drafting in those (high) positions are there for a reason.”

(You can view my pre-draft 2005 story on Tedford and his quarterbacks at: