Golden Nuggets: Tedford Reaches Out to Fans for Support

After the 8-5 finish, Tedford shares his disappointment with the season and reminds Cal fans that they should try to be positive, as he will do whatever he can to learn from this season and improve next year.  He sounds similarly introspective like he was after 2007.  While 2007's problems were found within the locker room, Tedford vows to assess the entire program--players, coaches, schemes--to find the answers to what went wrong this year.

On asking fans for their support, but not blindly

This season obviously was disappointing, and there’s nobody more disappointed than I am. I’m sick to my stomach about it. This place means a lot to me and our success means a lot to me. I’m disappointed not only for our players and our coaches, but for our fans because I know how much they want us to be successful. I think it’s important that even though people are frustrated, and so am I, to still lend support to what we’re doing so it doesn’t get so quick to be negative. You’re going to have to battle through some things sometimes. I’m asking for their support. I’m as disappointed as anybody. I’m just asking for people to support us, and our players, so that we can move in the right direction. We don’t have to keep wallowing in this. Let’s try to look forward instead of looking back. Let’s be supportive of how we move forward and not look back to the bad things.

On declining other job offers illustrating his commitment to Cal

Even though there have been opportunities to go some other places, I’m completely focused on reaching our goals here. This year, we didn’t and I take responsibility for that. We need to be better coached. We need to play better. I’m not satisfied with eight wins. We’re going to do everything we can to define the problems and fix them. I’m completely committed to this. I have stayed here because I am committed to it. I’m committed. I know eight wins is not what we wanted. But there needs to be some support so we can move forward and not just look at the negative things. We’re going to do our best to learn from it and we’re going to work on it and continue to try to reach all of our goals. I totally appreciate where people want to go and what they want to do. We absolutely do as well. Are we going to be perfect? No. Am I going to be perfect? No. We’re going to have times where we have adversity. Part of this whole deal is overcoming adversity. Part of overcoming adversity is the help from our fans to help overcome it, provide the environment to help us overcome adversity – not pile on and make the adversity harder to overcome.

 On his personal disappointment with the season

I feel terrible about it. There’s a knot in my stomach. I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about it. You lose sleep thinking about how you can improve and get better. There are a lot of internal expectations – we want to do well. But I don’t lose sight of how people take pride in our success and are disappointed in our failure. That is widespread because they care. I feel that as much as you could possibly imagine.

 On correcting the problems being more than just "working harder."

When I say we’re going to work harder, it doesn’t mean we’re going to just blow it off and work harder and just start over and do the same things that we’ve always done. We’re continually trying to develop our players, our coaches, and the whole program. We’re not going to just say it’s status quo and we’re going to just work harder at what we do. Part of the hard work is defining who you are and what you’re going to be, what you’re going to work at. It’s not about working so hard because we work very hard. It’s about working smart and it’s about defining what you can do. That’s the process we have to get done.
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On where you start in making the corrections

You have to go back and look at X’s and O’s first. Every year, you look to see if you are doing the right things schematically. Are your matchups right? Are your players executing? If they are not, why aren’t they? Is it coaching? Or is it just that the other guy is better than you are? I don’t think it’s one of the other. I think it’s a little bit of everything.
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On practices

Do we practice smart? Is there such a thing as working too hard? Are we efficient? I’m going to make a list of everything that we do and we’re going to talk about them, we’re going to gather information – coaching staff, and players. Players are definitely a part of it because they’re the ones who are living it and give you feedback. It’s important to get feedback from the staff and it’s important to get feedback from players.

After the jump we have more on Tedford's commitment to improve the program, an update (or lack thereof) on Jorge Gutierrez's knee, a look at how basketball fared in this week's polls, and more.

Cal Football

• After a disappointing season, Tedford has had much to think about in the last two weeks.  He vows to assess all aspects of his program to determine how to improve it.
• Cam Inman says Best made the right decision to leave for the NFL.  While he'll have to find a niche role to fill (likely a speedy complement to a team's standard running game), he should have no problem finding a team willing to take him during the first day.