Top 50 Cal Sports Moments — No. 31: Serendipity Rodgers, 2002

As the Pac-12 Conference era comes to a close after more than a century we count down the top 50 moments involving Cal athletics.

THE MOMENT: One day in October 2002, in his first season as Cal’s head coach, Jeff Tedford was watching film of Butte (Community) College tight end Garrett Cross, a recruiting target of the Golden Bears staff, when Tedford’s attention was grabbed by the person throwing the ball. “I noticed the quarterback,” Tedford, a now Fresno State’s head coach, said this week.  “He kind of popped off the tape at me.” An assistant told him the quarterback was some unknown freshman. His name was Aaron Rodgers.

THE STORY: Aaron Rodgers was a short quarterback who operated in obscurity at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, California. Division III Lewis & Clark showed some interest, and Illinois offered him an opportunity as a walk-on, but that was it, even though Rodgers had sprouted to his current 6-foot-2 height during his senior year.

Rodgers nearly quit football, but decided to give it another shot at nearby Butte (Community) College, and led it to a No. 2 national ranking in his first college season. Meanwhile, Tedford was in need of a quarterback since Kyle Boller was a senior and would be a first-round pick in the 2003 NFL draft.

However, Tedford was not looking for a quarterback when he turned on the film in October 2022 to look at Butte tight end Garrett Cross, a recruiting target.  After watching the film for a few minutes, Tedford was distracted by the efficiency of a quarterback he knew nothing about. “The guy did everything right,” Tedford said this week. “He kind of popped off the tape at me.” It was a serendipitous moment.

Junior college players typically cannot move to a Division I football program until after their second season. But Rodgers had not come to junior college because of high school academic deficiencies, like most juco athletes do.  He had a reported 3.6 grade-point average in high school and an SAT scores of 1300, which meant he would be eligible to transfer after one year of junior college.

Rodgers game action at Butte College in 2002, and him signing with Cal at the end of the video:

Few coaches knew anything about this kid playing JC ball in the remote town of Oroville, and fewer knew he would eligible to transfer to a Division I program as a freshman. But Tedford quickly became aware of both bits of information, though he still had never spoken to Rodgers.

In early November, two weeks after seeing Rodgers on film, Tedford attended a Butte practice to watch Cross again, and he took the time to watch Rodgers, noting that Rodgers was “running the show, everybody gravitated to him.”

Still Tedford did not speak to Rodgers. While driving back home, he called Rodgers on the phone, spoke to him for the first time, and offered him a scholarship. The rest, as they say, is history.

Five games into the 2003 season, Rodgers became the Bears’ starting quarterback, leading the Bears to their first bowl victory in 10 years.  The next year, he helped Cal to a No. 4 ranking in the final 2004 regular-season AP and coaches polls, and finished ninth in the Heisman Trophy voting.

He was a first-round pick of the Packers in the 2004 NFL draft, and has been named MVP four times, more than any player except Peyton Manning.

Oh, by the way, Cross came to Cal too and caught 44 passes for eight touchdowns, nearly all of them from Rodgers.

*Top 50 Moment No. 32: Triumphant Defeat, 1991

*Top 50 Moment No. 33: Camelot’s Death, 1963

*Only specific acts that occurred while the team or athlete was at Cal were considered, and an accomplishment of a season or a career was not included unless it can be identified in a particular moment.

*Leslie Mitchell of the Cal Bears History twitter site aided in the selection of the top 50 moments.

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