Jeff Tedford was hired to win. Fresno State needs that to happen … now

Football has to carry the day at the college level. It is the primary revenue driver for athletic departments across the country. At Fresno State, it is the one and only.

Ticket sales. Donations. TV revenue.

When the Bulldogs are winning, all three rise, spinning off that patch of green 100 yards long and 53 1/3 yards wide.

Fresno State Athletic Director Jim Bartko said it when he was hired in November 2014 and has repeated it again and again: “It’s our only sport that has any chance to make money. There’s no other sport that has a chance, so we need to maximize that.”

Welcome to the pressure cooker, Jeff Tedford, the former Bulldogs quarterback and assistant who has returned as the team’s coach in 2017. Those three- and five-year rebuilds that many new hires caution are needed? Not here. There’s room for some patience, but not a lot. The weight is on the new guy.

“I realize it’s there,” Tedford says. “But feeling the pressure, I’m not going to do anything differently. I have a job to do and it’s educate kids, graduate kids and win championships.”

Fresno State hasn’t come close to winning, much less the championship part, in each of the past two years, going 1-11 a year ago and 3-9 in 2015. Ticket revenues have been falling, leaving it to athletic department administrators to further stretch the resources.

Meanwhile, the department two years ago launched a Bulldog Stadium renovation project that could run $60 million. It restored a wrestling program disbanded in 2006 and added women’s water polo, bringing the number of teams to 21, more than many Power 5 Conference schools funded with budgets up to three times the size of the Bulldogs’ $37.8 million.

It committed to providing all scholarship athletes with a cost-of-attendance stipend. It is eying another run at a training table or meal plan for the athletes after a pilot program fizzled in 2016.

So Tedford’s challenge is clear in his first season back at his alma mater: win games, fill the stadium and drive revenue to fuel not only football but all of the teams at Fresno State.

“It’s hard to put pressure on one sport so much, but a lot of schools are in that boat,” Bartko says. “I mean, UNLV had a $4 million deficit and San Diego State had one, San Jose State had one, New Mexico … you don’t want it to be that way, but when you have only one thing to lean on to get the money it makes it tough.”

Without a course correction at Fresno State, Bartko said, there is only one result.

Trouble.

Rough spot, right coach

Tedford has been through this before.

At Cal, his first head-coaching job, he inherited a program coming off a 1-10 season. But his first Golden Bears team went 7-5, including victories at No. 15 Michigan State and No. 12 Washington.

They missed out on the postseason only because the program was hit with a one-year bowl ban and placed on NCAA probation for violations under former coach Tom Holmoe.

The NCAA, at least, has no beef with the Bulldogs.

But Fresno State does have challenges, beyond the recent losing seasons – a double whammy in fact.

It has to win to reconnect with its fan base but at the same time needs revenue from guaranteed-payoff games against tough teams on the road to support the budget. During the past few seasons, those have not gone well for the Bulldogs or any Group of Five program.

This season, Fresno State is receiving $1.4 million to play at Alabama and $1 million at Washington. There are two big-money guarantee games lined up in both the 2020 (Colorado and Texas A&M) and 2021 (UCLA and Oregon) seasons.

The university also is asking fans to fill a home stadium that provides plenty of reasons to stay away, even if the Bulldogs do start winning. There is the poor egress, limited concessions and sketchy restrooms.

None of that is news to Tedford, who insists he is focused on “process” not pressure.

“I’ve seen the budget. I know where we’re at. I know what it does to other sports,” Tedford says. “I know the bind that it puts everyone in. It’s very evident where the shortcoming is – right there in that stadium, which affects everyone. But while I realize that, it’s not something that I think about ever.

“The process is more what I think about. I don’t think, ‘What do we do to get the stadium full?’ I think more, ‘What do we do daily to be successful, to win?’ ”

Rebuilding with local stars

To that point, Tedford and his staff have sharpened focus on recruiting the central San Joaquin Valley to keep local high school stars home. In a short period of time, position groups in need of repair have been bolstered.

Coming out of the spring, the Bulldogs were down defensive linemen after switching to a 4-3 scheme from a 3-4. Cornerback, where Fresno State has lacked depth for years, was an issue. The safety spots and offensive line, too.

In the spring, Tedford had his new staff looking not only for the best fits for the recruiting Class of 2018, but players who could provide an immediate boost.　　　

Fresno State added wideout Michiah Quick, a former Central High standout who started his college career at Oklahoma in the Big 12. It signed another Central product in cornerback Johnny Johnson, a graduate transfer from UCLA. Romello Harris, a running back from Tulare, transferred home after one season at Washington State.

In fall camp, the infusion of talent and depth was obvious.

The Bulldogs also are tighter. Tedford and staff worked on that, just as he did at Cal in 2002.

At the top of the to-do list was rebuilding confidence. Bert Watts, a safety on those 2001-02 Cal teams and now the Bulldogs’ linebackers coach, reflects on what it was like then in Berkeley:

“We had guys that literally did not want to come to the locker room anymore. It was unbelievable. If you would have polled that group – if you could somehow poll confidence – we would have been hovering around 25 or 30 percent.

“Coach Tedford and that staff, they made us believe that we could do it no matter what. There was no other option.”

The Bulldogs have been soaking in that same message.

“Coach Tedford, he’s a demanding guy,” says junior KeeSean Johnson, Fresno State’s leading receiver in 2016. “That’s one thing he’s going to do. He’s going to demand it out of you, you’re going to do it, and he’s going to give you confidence while demanding it.

“It’s not going to be just him yelling at you, telling you this and that. He’s going to tell you good things and I can see certain things spark me. I feel like that helps. He has coached a lot of great people, quarterbacks and receivers, and he knows a great player when he sees one so he’s going to demand and get the best out of you.”

Tedford says he likes where his team is headed and believes the influx of talent, at the very least, should pique the curiosity of the fan base.

“Being around these guys and seeing the change in that attitude and their excitement and their enthusiasm to kick this off has been great.

“Obviously, you probably all saw that we were picked to finish sixth (and last) in our division and that’s fine with us because that’s where we deserve to be until we prove people wrong, so there’s a lot of motivation there.

“I see a different look on their faces. I see a different bounce in their step. I see a different energy. Obviously, that should happen after they’re down and out in January after a 1-11 season, but I’m excited about it.”

Making it work

What if the new direction doesn’t pay off soon enough? Bartko steers clear of specifics.

“We have to get better,” the athletic director says, “or we’ll have to get leaner.”

The Bulldogs already were running lean even before restoring wrestling and adding women’s water polo. Those programs begin fielding teams in 2017-18.

Even the other typically high-profile program, coach Rodney Terry’s men’s basketball team, has felt the crunch. Despite reaching the NCAA and National Invitation tournaments the past two seasons, Terry is working with a team budget that ranks seventh among his Mountain West peers.

In 2017-18, the athletic department will receive roughly 40 percent, about $15.1 million, of its budget from university support. In 2010-11, it was $5.1 million.

The wrestling program is to be funded by a combination of university support, private donations and the department through its first few years but at some point it may all fall on athletics.

Mountain West revenue distributions also will take a hit, the result of the conference putting only one men’s basketball team in the NCAA Tournament the past two years.

Can a packed Bulldog Stadium make that large of an impact?

In 2013, when quarterback Derek Carr led Fresno State to the second of back-to-back Mountain West championships, athletics raked in an additional $1 million from single-game ticket sales.

Tedford saw it at Cal, as well. In his first game there, 27,185 turned out at 73,000-plus seat Memorial Stadium.

“The first year it was funny because people would come, and it’s empty, people are laying out sunbathing in the stadium,” he recalls. “Then we started to fill up the stadium and I’d get mail, ‘I don’t like it. We don’t have enough space any more to lay out.’ ”

Two seasons later, when Cal was on its way to a 10-2 season and No. 9 ranking in both major polls, the average attendance was 64,019.

“When we started having success, it just blew up,” Tedford says. “Here, I think if we have success, there have been a lot of full stadiums here, so I can only attribute it not being full to a lack of success on the field.

“I tell people, I understand my obligation to put a product on the field to get you back in the stadium. I understand what our obligation is – to play exciting football and be disciplined, to play hard. It doesn’t necessarily equate to wins, but what I’ve got from fans it’s not just the wins it’s kind of how the losses were happening. That’s just what I’ve heard. But hopefully we can change that.”

Winning can make all the difference – for fans and to the bottom line. Bartko says he has the right coach for the job.

“Easiest hire I’ll ever make. In three years I could have a sign out, ‘Will work for food or something.’ But if I had to put my job on the line for rebuilding football, Jeff Tedford is the guy I want.”

This story was originally published August 31, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Jeff Tedford was hired to win. Fresno State needs that to happen … now."