Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was not offered a D-I scholarship coming out of Chico High. Instead he toiled in relative obscurity in Butte Community College in Oroville, Calif., for the first year of his college career, leading them to a NorCal Conference Championship and a No. 2 national ranking.
It was then that California Golden Bears head coach Jeff Tedford discovered Rodgers. Tedford was looking at tight end Garrett Cross on some recruiting tape and noticed the play of the quarterback who was throwing to him. Because of his good grades and SAT scores, transferring to Cal became a mere formality for the 2003 season.
Under Tedford's tutelage, Rodgers then went on to have one of the best careers in Cal football history, completing 64% of his passes, racking up 8.2 passing yards per attempt, and a 150 passer rating, culminating in an incredible 10-1 2004 regular season. Probably the most impressive number was his incredibly low interception percentage, with only 1.95% of his passes ending up in the hands of the other team. Tedford above all values quarterbacks who didn't turn over the ball and have good accuracy, and Rodgers passed both marks with flying colors.
In his pre-Super Bowl presser before his trip to Dallas, Rodgers credited Tedford directly for the development of his leadership and fundamentals. Indeed, currently Rodgers has the lowest interception percentage of any NFL quarterback in the history of the league, the sixth-best completion percentage, and the best-ever passer rating at 98.4. It's still early in his career and his stats are probably bound to taper off, but numbers like those are part of the reason Rodgers is in the Super Bowl.
And he has his college football coach to partially thank for that.
Aaron Rodgers credits Cal coach Jeff Tedford for his development. (via rmaq28)
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