The past two days have seen a torrent of news on a potential return of Pac-12 football, in the wake of the Big Ten announcing a return to football. In two days, the conference has gone from maybe playing in mid-late November to a potential start on Halloween.

In today's 3-2-1, we're looking at how Cal got there, along with a look at the Bears' newest offer at the quarterback position, and the four-year anniversary of one of Cal's craziest games in recent memory.

1. How We Got Here

September 3rd: The Pac-12 conference announced what they called a 'groundbreaking' testing partnership with the Quidel Corporation, a San Diego based company specializing in the development of rapid response testing for a variety of diseases. This partnership was meant to give the Pac-12 daily testing capability by the end of the month with a 15 minute turnaround time, something that solved a problem of rapid testing that the conference cited when postponing the season in August.

For a while, nothing happened in the aftermath, until Tuesday, September 15th. The Big Ten conference was on the cusp of a vote to start up their football season on October 24th. Pac-12 players, initially from USC, sent an open letter to California governor Gavin Newsom looking to ease public health restrictions to allow for practice and a return for a season.

September 16th: The Big Ten made their official announcement of a return to play. Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott noted that there were still restrictions in California and Oregon that wouldn't allow half the conference to practice.

By the afternoon, the offices of Newsom and Oregon governor Kate Brown had either eased the state restrictions or noted that the restrictions in place didn't stop the Pac-12 from playing games (though in California, a rule about cohorts of 12 made practicing for 11 on 11 football near farcical). By mid-afternoon, Jon Wilner of the Mercury News reported that the cohort restriction was on pace to be revised, as the governor and the commissioner had spoken on the issue. The focus moved toward getting local health officials on-board

September 17th: James Crepea of the Oregonian reported a quote from Larry Scott, "Pac-12 'going to push the envelope’ to play football this fall, earliest timeline to return ‘end of October-early November."

Wilner further reported that the Pac-12 was targeting Halloween, October 31st as a potential start date, pending approval from the conference CEO group and approval from the public health officials in the Bay Area. For Cal, those are the public health officials in the city of Berkeley.

That's where Cal stands as of this moment, waiting for further word of a restart.

2. What Comes Next?

An October 31st restart means six weeks worth of ramp up. Cal has had around 75-80 student-athletes participating in voluntary workouts over the last couple months per Justin Wilcox, but this is a different beast, a whole ramp up. I asked defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon today on his thoughts on worries about sloppy defensive play with however much leadup they'd get (with missed tackles seen in a handful of the early college games so far). Sirmon had this to say:

"Football is a developmental sport, football in my opinion is not a talent sport, and what I mean by that is you’re consistently and constantly getting better, you’re fighting against your own physical deterioration. Even as an NFL player, you’re continuing to get better, that’s why you see guys who continue to get better into their late 20s, it’s not that they’re physically better, they’ve developed a better skill, better technique, better mental approach to attacking the game. Football is that, and I can’t imagine seeing a better product with less development and less practice."

This is the next issue that teams will have to face on the field, though a silver lining is that talks have progressed to where the on-field stuff can be discussed, thanks to the improved testing.

3. The Fourth Anniversary of Cal's 50-43 win over 11th ranked Texas

One of the weirdest Cal games I've covered in four years of doing this (I'd put it top five with the Cheez-It Bowl, 2017 vs. Washington State, 2018 vs. Washington, and 2019 at Washington). This game had a handful of storylines going in:

- Cal had beaten Texas the year before thanks to a missed extra point

- Texas was 'back' with an overtime win over Notre Dame and a big win over UTEP

- Cal was coming in after a last second loss to San Diego State

- Both Cal's quarterback (Davis Webb) and one of their running backs (Vic Enwere), were from Texas, but weren't offered by the Longhorns coming out of high school.

I wrote more about the two game sweep of Texas here, but here's a brief summary of what went down:

- Chad Hansen nearly eclipses the 200 yard receiving mark, throws the Horns down after a score and runs in a two point conversion for good measure

- Cal injures freshman QB Shane Buechele briefly, as Tyrone Swoopes has to replace him, leading to an interception. Buechele now plays for Sonny Dykes at SMU

- Texas runs for 307 yards. Cal throws for 396.

- 68 points were scored in the first half. 0 were scored in the third quarter

- A blocked punt safety ends up helping Cal, who intercept Buechele at the end of the half and set up a Webb to Hansen TD pass

- Enwere has a multi-TD game, with his two career multi-TD efforts coming against Texas.

- Enwere nearly had three TDs, but he dropped the ball at the 1 yard line after a breakaway run. The refs ruled it a dead ball, giving Cal the ball at the 1 and the eventual win.

- Both Charlie Strong and Sonny Dykes would be fired from their respective schools within four months.

Suffice it to say, it was weird.

1. Important 2022 Recruiting Targets?

Cal did put out an offer today to a quarterback in the 2022 class, their second (AJ Duffy was offered under OC Beau Baldwin) but the first by Bill Musgrave to Servite quarterback Noah Fifita. Servite is the alma mater of 2020 OL commit Ender Aguilar, and Fifita put up 37 TDs and 4 INTs with 2892 yards passing in the Trinity League (the toughest league in the state) and against a schedule that featured Nevada state powerhouse Bishop Gorman.

Fifita, who's listed at 5'9", may not be as tall as the quarterbacks on Cal's roster, but put up big numbers in a tough league while showing a live arm, great anticipation and touch on his passes as a sophomore starting for the first time. He may be Cal's top quarterback target in the early going here in 2022.

2. Could Returns Happen?

One curious thing that has happened in the Big Ten, namely Ohio State, is that players who had declared for the 2021 NFL Draft, Wyatt Davis and Shawn Wade, decided to return to the school to play the fall season.

Luc Bequette, now at Boston College, couldn't return, but there could be a chance that Camryn Bynum returns to the team if he hasn't signed an agent and submitted the necessary paperwork. This is speculation and Bynum hasn't said anything about coming back. The senior corner did say in his exit interview with Cal media that his reason for declaring was the post-January 1st season.

Admittedly, predicting anything at this point seems moot, since 2020 has been near unpredictable (I predicted last week on the Pac-12's Sirius XM Channel that we wouldn't see a Pac-12 game until post-January 1. It's looking like I'm wrong). Right now, the hope is that everything can come together to where games can be played in a safe, secure way that doesn't compromise the health of the players, coaches, support staff and community at large. Coronavirus has by no means been eliminated, which should be in the back of the mind of any decision-maker around the conference, but the prevailing thought appears to be that tools are in place to mitigate and eliminate risk. For the sake of many, I hope they're right.