I interviewed Jeff Tedford a few days ago in his office. He had phoned me at home several weeks earlier expressing concern about a column I wrote about him. I had interviewed him at the Bay Area College Football Media Day and asked if he has anything to prove and he said, no. I wrote he seemed complacent. The word complacent troubled him and he asked if we could meet. I am posting our long interview in two blog takes. I wrote a column based on the interview which runs Wednesday in the Press Democrat, and will be posted online this evening. I began the interview with the same question I used at the Media Day.
Cohn: Do you feel you have anything to prove?
Tedford: I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about, ‘What do I have to prove today?’ How I wake up in the morning I look at what we need to do to accomplish what we need to do as a team. Personally, I love this team. I love this school. I appreciate what everyone wants. Everyone wants to go to the Rose Bowl. And I appreciate and understand what my role is as the head coach here to do the things we need to do to get there. As much as myself, the coaches, the players want to get to the Rose Bowl, I have a true appreciation for what the fans want, as well. That’s their deal. That’s what they want. We’ve been very close many times and expectation has changed over the years, so what I have to prove is that I can do my part to help this team accomplish its goals for many many reasons – team, staff, alumni, university, the whole thing. But I really don’t ever wake up thinking, ‘What am I going to do today, what are my goals today to serve myself?’ It’s not that way whatsoever. My goals as I wake up on that couch many times (he points to the couch in his office) are, ‘What can we do to accomplish what we need to accomplish whether it’s to win that week’s game, whether it’s to overcome a bad loss, whatever the situation may be? I’m not entering this season with the thought on my mind that we have to do something to fulfill a need of mine. We need to do our best to reach our full potential because this is a team effort, it’s everybody in it. As far as me proving anything I’m not sure it’s proving something. I would like to recognize our full potential to make everybody happy.
Cohn: In that article I wrote about you I used the word ‘complacent.’ I understand it would bug a coach for some guy to say he’s complacent. Clearly, you don’t feel complacent.
Tedford: Oh, not at all. I know for a fact I’m not complacent. I have a burning desire and a knot in my stomach over every little thing, I’m so focused on details of what we’re trying to get done and I still spend as much time as ever trying to figure out the answers to what we need to do to reach our potential and attain our goals. If I were ever to get to be complacent, in my mind it would be someone who takes things very easy. After last season, my health wasn’t real good. And my health wasn’t real good because I was stressed out. I don’t think that’s a characteristic of somebody who’s complacent. Somebody who’s complacent really doesn’t care and that’s far from the truth. You can ask anybody around here how I grind and things like that. I don’t see myself as complacent whatsoever. I’m as driven as ever and maybe more than even in the beginning because of that elusive golden ring. I spend a lot of time trying to put things together and reflect and evaluate what we need to do to make that happen. If I were complacent I would just be status quo and keep going along like we’ve always done things all the time and not evaluate and whatever it is. There’s a lot of numbers out there. I don’t look at any of that stuff. We’ve had so many wins or we’ve had so many bowl appearances or we’ve done something for the first time in 50 years – whatever that is – I don’t get caught up in that whatsoever. I’ve had enough success in my life as a player, I am driven to do the things that we haven’t done, not rest on the things that we have done. That’s I guess the best way I could say it.
Cohn: Jeff, I’m a reporter so I’m going to follow up on something. You don’t have to answer but I’d be a bad reporter if I didn’t follow up. You said your health suffered. A follow-up would be do you feel comfortable telling me what the issue was and are you healthy now?
Tedford: Well, I’m healthy now. I was stressed out at the end of year. I really was, worn down and stressed out. At one point last year when we were 8-3, it felt to me like we were 3-8. Again I don’t think that’s the attitude of someone who’s complacent. Then it was great to beat Arizona and beat Stanford but we didn’t finish the season very well and that bothered me. A lot. When you sit back and look at the program, the way I do things, the way the staff does things, what environment am I creating if I’m stressed out for the players, the coaches and everything else? It was something I had to evaluate in the offseason to make sure I have my ducks in a row to be able to put things in the proper perspective of the things I spend my time using brain power on. Some of it last year had to do with some of the external things that were piling up on us. I had to learn to deal with that. I had to evaluate that in the offseason and say, ‘OK, this is how I’m going to deal with it.’
Cohn: What do you mean by an external thing?
Tedford: The blogging and all the stuff, you know fans have always had opinions for a million years. It’s so readily available now to just say whatever they want, to just blurt criticisms out about things that is so readily available. Even though I try to insulate myself from that, because it doesn’t do anyone any good to listen to or read all that stuff, but it’s amazing when even your friends call and say, ‘Are you doing all right? I’m reading all this stuff they’re writing about you.’ No matter how much you try to stay insulated it gets back to you at some point. I had to learn to deal with that toward the end of last year. Again, if I didn’t care and was complacent it wouldn’t bother me.
Cohn: It would strike me that of all the coaches in the Bay Area you get the least amount of criticism, maybe Harbaugh because it’s a bit of a honeymoon. I mean Brian Sabean at the Giants and Bruce Bochy, you should see what people write about them. It’s interesting to me that you do take it to heart and what you get I would honestly say is light compared to what other people get. This leads me to another question which fascinates me. You phoned me – that article had probably been up on the internet two hours – and you phoned me. Why would you care? Really, the primary question for me is why would you care? You’re Jeff Tedford. Do you understand?
Tedford: That’s exactly my point, is I’m not complacent. It does bother me. I do care. And it’s funny because of the lessons I learned last year I went into this (the Media Day) saying, ‘I am not going to get caught up on what anybody says.’ I went into that day saying that. (He laughs.) So my wife, she hits a thing on the computer that comes up with anything that’s been written. She says, ‘You should see this.’ So I went and I read it and I thought, ‘That did not come across – I thought the question was posed more toward me and I answered, ‘It’s not’ – I wish I would have said, ‘It’s not about me,’ but I said, ‘I don’t look at it that way blah blah blah.’ So I found myself caring about that again. That’s when I called you just to be able to say, ‘This is what my thoughts are about this.’ And then I told my wife – and I even told the team, ‘Guys, I’m not going to get caught up in that. We shouldn’t get caught up in all the external stuff.’ And I told the team, ‘You know what, I didn’t practice what I preached to you guys yesterday.’ I said, ‘The first thing I got asked a question. I had what I thought was a bad article written about me and I reacted by getting caught up in it.’ I said, ‘My bad. I shouldn’t have done that. We can’t do that. We can’t listen to things that we perceive as negative because they’re opinions of other people.’ So what I said I was not going to do I did right off the bat. But I didn’t get mad at it.
Cohn: You were a complete gentleman.
Tedford: I wanted to communicate because last thing I want people to think is that because we win eight games a year and because whatever the things are – we’re the second-winningest program in the Pac-10 over the last eight years; we’ve been to bowl games and all that stuff — I’m not complacent whatsoever. I still know we’re driven, have a burning desire to get where we want to be so the word complacent . . . and you said, ‘How about winning a bowl game?’
Cohn: I said you hadn’t won one at the end of last season. But you got me, you’re 5-2 in bowl games.
Tedford: I don’t want to stir something up. I don’t know how the record gets set straight but I don’t want to get into a back-and-forth deal. You handled it very well. I appreciate you taking my call and talking to me about it. Because I learn stuff from media people. I can learn where they’re coming from and that way I’m educated on how to handle certain situations the next time.
Cohn: I don’t think you didn’t follow your own advice. You were very mature and wanted to discuss what happened and it led to a nice interaction here. I don’t think you did anything to betray yourself. When you talk to your wife give her my apologies for ruining her evening.
Tedford: (laughs) It was OK. It really was. It didn’t ruin the evening whatsoever.
End of Part I
