I’m an idiot.  As seen here:

"California coach Jeff Tedford has agreed to a four-year contract extension that will keep the two-time Pac-10 coach of the year with the Golden Bears through 2013, The Associated Press learned Tuesday."

Still doesn’t change my thought process that he’ll take off someday, if only because we’ve seen that kind of thing happen too often.  Since, you know, Bobby Petrino signed a 10-year deal with Louisville last year.  Anyway, at least he’ll be around for the foreseeable future.  Go Bears!

I finally feel like a real writer - we somehow managed to get ourselves linked to on the Cal athletics page (or at least on the Cal dance team page, which is the only one that I frequent) - and I finally got my first headscratching comment.  I can’t even properly respond to it.  All I can say is, come back and tell me I hate Cal when you wear a J.J. Arrington jersey.  In public.

It was not my intention to say that I want Tedford to leave, I’m just acknowledging that the temptation to leave for the NFL is strong.  There are certainly a number of significant college coaches who are/were lifers - JoePa at Penn State, Bobby Bowden at Florida State, Bear Bryant at Alabama and…well, tell me who else, really?  A quick examination of just Pac-10 coaches reveals that most of them have NFL experience:

Pete Carroll - former New York Jets and New England Patriots head coach
Karl Dorrell - former Denver Broncos wide receivers coach
Jim Harbaugh - former Oakland Raiders assistant coach
Mike Bellotti - no NFL experience
Mike Riley - former San Diego Chargers head coach
Tyrone Willingham - former Minnesota Vikings running backs coach
Bill Doba - no NFL experience
Dennis Erickson - former Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers head coach
Mike Stoops - no NFL experience

How many of those coaches can you see staying for the long-term?  Carroll is certainly a candidate, but he’s already had his dalliances with the NFL, and numerous media types reiterate on an annual basis that the right offer, with a combination of a monster contract and full control could lure him back to the pros.  Mike Bellotti’s never been in the NFL and hasn’t shown an inclination to leave Oregon, so there’s him.  Mike Stoops had pretty much followed his brother around wherever he was before landing the Arizona job to be on his own, so who knows what his true aspirations are?  And Bill Doba…who cares?

Someone else brought up Steve Spurrier in a comment on my previous post.  I don’t think he’s the best parallel to Tedford out there for a variety of reasons - as mentioned, Tedford doesn’t have the ego that Spurrier does, Tedford doesn’t run a wildly different system that he believes is superior, and he hasn’t outwardly shown the desire to coach at the NFL level. 

But it’s hard to deny that the desire to compete at the highest level is strong.  If you’ve been having success at one level it’s human nature to see how far you can go and how much of a success you can be.  That was Spurrier’s rationale for leaving Florida after building a perennial contender, and could you really have blamed Tedford if he had accepted the Falcons job?  Turning around Michael Vick and making him into a capable passer would have been the crowning achievement on his already-stellar coaching career.  Coupled with his college track record, coaching up Vick may have made him a QB guru on par with Bill Walsh, Mike Holmgren, and Mike Shanahan.  At least, it will have been a greater and more notable accomplishment than turning Nate Longshore into yet another Tedford-brand first rounder.

There was some discussion after Nick Saban fled for Alabama that perhaps the pendulum had swung back to hiring proven NFL assistants rather than dipping into the college heading coaching pool for head coaching candidates.  But these things are cyclical, and if Bobby Petrino succeeds in Atlanta, the doors to the NFL will remain open for guys like Kirk Ferentz of Iowa, Steve Sarkisian of USC, and Tedford. 

Obviously, the Falcons job has since been filled.  But what happens if, in a few years, the Oakland Raiders decide they need a new head coach to mentor JaMarcus Russell?  What if the Detroit Lions try their luck with another Cal coach hoping to turn around Brady Quinn?  Or the Cleveland Browns with local hero Troy Smith?  Coaches with a strong track record of success at the quarterback position, even if only at the college level, will always be in strong demand.  If Bobby Petrino can get a contract worth 4.8 million a year for five years, given the way NFL head coaching salaries are spiraling upwards, how much will Tedford be worth in two or three years if Cal is able to sustain its level of performance?  6 million a year?  Will the university be able to compete with that?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want Tedford to leave.  I’m a guy who almost got into a fight in the stands during the Cal/Oregon game in 2004 with one particularly pessimistic guy who was calling for Tedford to be fired - in the middle of a 10-2 season.  But the money will be there.  The demand for him is there.  And the chance to put an exclamation point on his professional career will be there too.  He can choose to be a legend at Cal or the chance to prove he’s a genius in the pros.  His remarks and past behavior certainly lead us to believe (and I want to believe) that he’ll be around for the long run.  But recent history tells us that such a belief may be misguided.