Notes from Justin Wilcox on the Pac-12 Webinar Series

Over the past four days, Pac-12 coaches have been on a webinar series, with three coaches taking questions from analyst Yogi Roth and the media at large each day. Today, Cal head coach Justin Wilcox joined Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal and Arizona head coach Kevin Sumlin to talk about some of the pitfalls they've dealt with and their current situations evolving day by day due to COVID-19

Aside from the jokes, Golden Bear Report was on the call and has the main quotes from Wilcox on the teleconference.

On the best thing they've done or seen with their groups during this time:

The thing that's been really neat to see is just how the guys enjoy each other. I think any time you have a chance to get on there with them, whether it's a position meeting or a group meeting or a team meeting, the engagement of seeing each other, the banter as a group they've probably missed and I know they've missed. That first week was about getting home and getting your bearings, but you start missing your teammates and the people in the organization.

It's been really neat to watch them in how much they care about each other, keep up with each other and motivate each other, that's been a special thing to watch as we've been through all this.

How have you talked to your team about the CSU's planning on holding class virtually and all the scenarios that have been bandied about?

They (the UCs and CSUs) are separate entities and California is a big state, there's a lot of information coming from the capital and more importantly, the local health officials. The neat thing to watch has been the information from our chancellor and our athletic director and the modeling that is going on. Coach Sumlin, coach Cristobal and I have been on these meetings with the Pac-12 about the different models for the season, but here locally on our campus with our chancellor, they're modeling different structures, and we're always in action. There's going to be a time that we're going to be able to come back and get together, we're fully intent on playing this season. How we get to that point, there's daily changes, when do we come back, when do we start working out together, but every intention is to do that. Again, I've just been really impressed locally with our chancellor and our athletic director with how they're working through these models because the information changes daily.

On bringing in a new system offensively in this time:

Similar to the other coaches, we got a week in, which for us was four practices and it might seem like a small number, but to get those four practices in and those corresponding meetings in the off days, it was really productive and thanks to technology, Zoom, Xos, Kahoot, we can engage with the guys on football. I don't know how we would have ever done anything like in my day, we would have faxed it to you, who knows. I don't know if it would've worked.

The ability to engage with them during those meetings has been critical, and we got a lot in offensively, it's a credit to our coaches and how they handled that and our players for digesting it. As the other coaches mentioned, with Zoom and Facetime, there's time to get to know the guys. Even though they're not next to them, they're still able to get to know them because there's a dialog, whether it's football or nothing to do with football, which is really important in this whole process.

On if there's an uneven start, what changes he may want to see at the end of season to make sure the playing field is even to get into the CFP

To say it's going to be the same for every state and every conference is probably going to be difficult, there are so many dynamics involved. At the end of the day, each and every conference is going to make their decision with some direction from the NCAA, and as long as our conference realizes the importance, and we do, of being aligned with the CFP and all the entities involves, that's critical. Everybody wants to play, everybody's intent on playing as many games as we can, a full schedule if we're able. If things change along the way, as Kevin (Sumlin) said, we'll be ready to adjust, but we need to be in concert, working with the other conferences and the CFP throughout the country to give us as normal of an experience as we possibly can.

Would you rather play an eight game schedule, end on time starting the year in October, or would you rather play 12 games delayed, go into January, but play a full scheduled?

That's a difficult question to answer right now without more information, how that affects the other conferences, the CFP, are we working in unison or is that putting us out on our own, so to speak? I wouldn't be able to answer that without more information. We've been in these meetings where we've modeled, I don't know if I can count them, hours and hours and hours of different seasons and what those would look like based on when the start time would be. To answer that I think we'd have to have more information.

Do you think this is a time for the Pac-12 to rebrand, with the negative headlines and to come out guns blazing from this?

Well, I know for us, and for me personally, I know what kind of players and coaches we have in our conference, it's extremely competitive on all fronts, in terms of the talent, in terms of the coaching, in terms of the institutions. We love going out to compete against these guys, and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about narratives and things like that. I understand the question and I think all of us can't wait to get started and get playing. We would love to play and we're going to do everything in our power to safely play as many games as possible. I don't want to speak for anybody else, but I know our conference is modeling and projecting to do just that. How that impacts us and the narrative moving forward, I don't know, but we and the other schools in our conference are excited to go out there and have the chance to compete.

On whether he's taken a pay cut and the chance of an NFL training camp style scenario, where Cal would leave the area to practice and play games

We haven't yet (as far him taking a pay cut), I've been in contact with Mr. Knowlton for the past two months for how we can be a part of the solution and help support the department, we're still discussing that and I'm being given direction by him and how he wants us to do that.

The second part of the question, everything is on the table, so when we talk about this modeling, whether it's at a conference level or at an institutional level, we're looking at every scenario based on where we're at that time, whether that's June 1, June 15, July 1, July 15, August 1, there's these different points where we've said 'is that a possibility, it could be, so we've modeled that out. How in-depth you go on that, we've discussed preliminary logistics, and those are the discussions we're having on a daily basis.

We've discussed some different (sites), but I'll leave it there, we've discussed the idea of that if it becomes necessary, it hasn't been determined if that's necessary. Again, this is all planning and modeling. We can sit here and talk though an exponential amount of scenarios, but have talked about that, and if it's a necessity for us to play, it's something we would consider.