Troy Calhoun says this coach has more influence on West Coast football than anyone in the 21st century

Quick: Who would you say the most influential figure in West Coast football has been since the turn of the century?

My mind immediately goes to Pete Carroll. His 82-9 run at USC from 2002-08 with seven straight Pac-10 championships, seven straight AP top-4 finishes, seven straight BCS bowl appearances and two national championships is unlikely to be duplicated any time soon. With three Heisman Trophy winners in four years and a billion first-round draft picks, this was USC at its absolute most cool.

The other figure that comes to mind is Chip Kelly. His 6-year run as Oregon's offensive coordinator and head coach saw the Ducks go 65-14, and the teams he built went 24-4 in 2013-14 under Mark Helfrich. His up-tempo version of the power spread was legitimately revolutionary, as teams across the game lined up in an attempt to go as fast as Kelly's Ducks. 

A third option here is Chris Petersen. Pete was not the patriarch of Boise State's rise, but he did oversee the Broncos at the zenith of their popularity and brought Washington football all the way back. A 147-38 record, all of it west of the Rockies, speaks for itself. 

A dark answer would be Larry Scott. The death of the Pac-12 wasn't a one-man show, but no one did more to kill the premier West Coast athletic conference than its former commissioner.

However, Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun has his own answer. 

The 57-year-old who played quarterback at Air Force and is now on the brink of his 18th season as the Falcons head coach argued for a current Mountain West head coach.

"Nobody's had more influence on West Coast football this century than Jeff Tedford. I think it's absolutely astounding what he's done -- as a quarterback coach, as an offensive coordinator, as a head coach. I mean really, you don't think we don't look back and wonder, what in the world? The job he did at Cal, the job that he's done at Fresno State. And honestly, nobody had more to do with the elevation of Oregon -- except for Phil Knight -- than maybe Jeff Tedford."

The 62-year-old Tedford has spent all but one year of his adult life in the western portion of North America, bouncing between the WAC/Mountain West, the Pac-12 and the Canadian Football League. 

The West Coast's has long been known as a breeding ground for quarterbacks and the evolution of the passing game in general, and Tedford more than carries his weight there. He's coached five first-round QBs in Trent Dilfer, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Kyle Boller and Aaron Rodgers, and recruited a sixth in eventual No. 1 pick Jared Goff. 

His 11-year run as Cal's head coach saw heights unlikely to be matched, with a 10-1 regular season with Rodgers under center in 2004, a Pac-10 co-championship in 2006, and a No. 2 ranking in 2007. (Seriously, when's the next time Cal football is going to be ranked No. 2 in the country?)

Tedford went 26-14 with two division championships, one MW championship and an AP No. 18 finish from 2017-19 at Fresno State, took two seasons off due to health concerns, and then resumed the job in 2022, where he's gone 18-8 with another MW championship and AP top-25 finish over the past two campaigns. 

Fresno State has finished in the AP Top 25 twice in the last 20 seasons -- both of them under Tedford.

Tedford even played a part in Chris Peterson's best season at Washington, serving as an offensive consultant for a Huskies team that won the Pac-12 and reached the College Football Playoff.

The Oregon argument is... interesting. 

Mike Bellotti would undoubtedly argue he is the most influential non-billionaire in Oregon's rise given that he won 116 games as the Ducks' head coach from 1995-08 and hired both Tedford and Kelly, but Oregon's identity as a team that pushes the stylistic envelope (schematically and aesthetically) came to be in 2001, with Harrington gunslinging while dressed like this. 

Oregon of 2024 is an evolved version of the program it was in 2001, and Oregon would not have been what it was in 2001 without Jeff Tedford.

That written, I'm still not sure I'd go as far as Calhoun does in arguing for his colleague, but I respect the argument nonetheless. 

Calhoun can share his respect for Tedford face-to-face when Air Force hosts Fresno State on Nov. 9.