Jeff Tedford will be inducted in the Fresno State Ring of Honor on Saturday, joining a group that highlights his impact on 40-plus years of Bulldogs’ football.
He played for coach Jim Sweeney and was a teammate of Henry Ellard, was an offensive coordinator for Sweeney and coached Lorenzo Neal and Trent Dilfer. He was the offensive coordinator for coach Pat Hill in his first season at Fresno State, and recruited and coached David Carr.
Through those years, Tedford was fully engrossed in the game as a player, an assistant coach and head coach in two stints at his alma mater, from 2017 to 2019 and 2022 to 2023, when Fresno State won two Mountain West Conference championships. Often, at the expense of life outside the game and his health, something he talked about stepping down as head coach at his alma mater due to heart-related health issues.
Tedford is now in a fascinating place as he becomes the 13th player or coach to be inducted into the Ring of Honor. He said he never gave much thought to what it would be like, away from the game. Never gave it any thought, really. “I don’t think I had much balance in life,” he said. “I was always working. I could never really turn it off. It took me a few months to turn it off, but now it’s turned off, and it feels great.
“I’m very happy. My health has improved. I don’t have that stress or anxiety. But I have a lot of fulfillment. I don’t have one regret about the commitment that we had, and when I say ‘we,’ I mean my family, who went through all this. But now, the commitment has shifted to something that is very enjoyable, not that football wasn’t, but this is just different. I’m so much more relaxed. I watch football, and sometimes I get a little into the coaching mode when I see something. But if we want to get up and go somewhere, we just tape the game.
“It’s different, and it’s a lot of fun.”
Tedford on Saturday will get a chance to see teammates from the Bulldogs’ 1981 and ‘82 teams, the latter going 11-1 with a conference championship and wild victory over Bowling Green in the California Bowl. Down 28-7 into the fourth quarter, Tedford and the Bulldogs racked up 220 yards of offense in the final 15 minutes, and scored 22 unanswered points to win 29-28, the final score coming on a 2-yard pass from Tedford to Vince Wesson with 11 seconds to go.
He also will get to see players he coached in 2022, when the Bulldogs became the first team in college football history to start a season 1-4 and finish it with 10 wins. He will get to see players he coached in 2017 and ‘18, when Fresno State became the first program in college football history to go from a 1-win season to winning 10 or more games in back-to-back seasons.
Tedford, the quarterback, led the Bulldogs to a school-record 11 victories in 1982. Tedford, the coach, broke that record with 12 victories in 2018.
The connection between the two did not just happen.
Tedford in fact turned down his first opportunity to get into coaching. He returned to Fresno State in 1987 after playing in the Canadian Football League for five seasons, looking to finish his bachelor’s degree. He also spent time with Sweeney as a volunteer assistant. “I didn’t make a dime,” he said. “I had a wife and a kid and we were completely broke, and when I say completely broke I mean completely broke.”
After the season, he had an offer to return to the CFL to be an assistant coach and an offer to work for a company in town. He stayed in Fresno.
“I was tired of bouncing around,” he said. “I wanted some structure in my life and it was a guaranteed thing. I think it was $25,000 a year and I thought, ‘Man, I hit the jackpot.’”
A month or so into it, that changed.
“I’ll never forget this, I was driving home one night thinking, ‘I made a huge mistake,’” he said. “I should have gone into coaching.’”
When he got home, his wife, Donna, was waiting for him. Lary Kuharich, who had offered him the job in Calgary, had called. Kuharich had started his interviews with Tedford, and interviewed a number of candidates. He went back to Tedford one last time. He took the job.
A few years later, Sweeney finally had room on his staff. Rich Olson, the Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator, left for a job at Miami with Dennis Erickson.
“Coach Sweeney called me and I really debated it at first because we loved what we were doing,” Telford said. “We were in my wife’s hometown of Calgary, just went to the Grey Cup, the Super Bowl in Canada. We were having fun. But if you know coach Sweeney, he doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Tedrord came back to Fresno State in 1992, calling plays for a team that beat USC in the Freedom Bowl, which is considered one of the biggest victories in program history.
The Bulldogs and Tedford have had plenty of significant wins, as well. As a player, Tedford said the California Bowl victory sticks out. “That’s what makes it so incredible,” he said. “There’s too many on the field things to narrow it down. There’s just way too many, which is a pretty cool thing. If it were just one, that’d probably be pretty boring.”
There was a price. The hours. The stress. The games – 23 as a player, 72 as an assistant and 66 as a head coach at Fresno State in a career that landed Tedford in the Hall of Fame at Cal and the Ring of Honor at his alma mater.
The one thing that stands out, he said, it’s the relationships. The Ring of Honor, Tedford said, is not a singular achievement, but something to be shared with all the players that he coached at Fresno State, all the coaches he coached with and for, over the years, all the support staff in the program.
“When I look back at it, I did this for a long, long time, at a very stressful level,” Tedford said. “I think that’s why right now, in retirement, I have a sense of accomplishment that we did something at a high level for a long, long period of time, and now I can enjoy life.
“My wife and I, this is the most time we’ve ever spent together, and I think it’s the happiest time we’ve ever had. And my kids, being able to talk to them, and it’s not just talk, it’s being present when you’re with them. I did a horrible job of being present, even if I was there physically with my wife or with my kids, because something was always on my mind about football … recruiting, academics, this or that, whatever … staff changes. There are so many things that go into it. But I think that’s what I feel so great about right now.
“I’m able to be present. I’m very happy now because my focus has shifted to what’s really important and that’s my wife and my family.”
