One of the questions Cal head coach Justin Wilcox pondered during a 50 minute Zoom session with assorted media members was the eligibility aspect, with the fourth-year head coach being in favor of giving every player another year of eligibility. The NCAA did just that, as the Division I council announced that everyone will get an extra year, whether they play in the fall or spring, per Yahoo Sports Pete Thamel.

That aside, there's plenty of questions that have gone unanswered, as the Bears and the Pac-12 are in foreign territory when it comes to a spring season, what the rest of the fall looks like.

"First of all, we all want to play, football coaches, players, and fans, we all want this to work. So much of it is out of our hands right now, and as it was for the fall," Wilcox noted "for the spring, there’s a lot of discussion going on right now as to what that exactly means. It has not been finalized yet. To me, there’s some key components that we have to come to grips with. In no particular order, the first is public health at the individual locations across the conference and what are people allowed to do under their public health orders. Eligibility is a huge question, if you play a spring season, how does that count? That’s something we should get clarity on real soon, maybe today. When would you start, because there’s a date you’d need to start and there’s a date you’d need to be finished up by, because there’s the 2021 season in the fall, how you balance that, the number of games, what’s feasible, the number of games is a big thing. Then the seniors, how do they work through this, is this something in terms of their goals and going to the NFL (that they’d want to do). There’s a lot there, and it’s important that we have the discussions, they’re doing it at the conference level and the national level, they’re working through a lot of that right now, and those are complicated things, as well as how many conferences are playing a spring season."

The key bit of things going forward is based on transparency with the players, who have many of the same questions that need answering.

"You’ve got to talk to the players and find out how they feel about that," Wilcox said. "It’s in the infancy stages of what spring would look like, but we’re going to take it to our team and I’ve talked to a lot of our guys already about how they feel about that thing, and they have a lot of the same questions."

Some of those questions have been pushed to the forefront by the #WeAreUnited movement, who has three Cal football players among their leadership in seniors Jake Curhan, Valentino Daltoso, and Josh Drayden. Like AD Jim Knowlton, Wilcox has been open with his players to talk about the movement, as they're looking at the movement to continue.

"We talked to everybody on the team, we support everybody’s stance on it. Everybody may have different views, and a lot of (the WeAreUnited demands) are very agreeable, people may agree with 100% of what they’re working towards," Wilcox said, "maybe 90, maybe 75%, and I think we would agree that some of those issues they brought up are absolutes, but we want guys to be respected for where they stand on it. I made myself and our coaches made ourselves available if they wanted to discuss it with us, I know they’ve had discussions with leadership at the institutions, Mr. Knowton has talked with them, they’ve met with the Pac-12, those guys are still having discussions amongst each other, and where it goes from there, we’ll see."

In the meantime, there's been a focus on keeping the players balanced. Coaches may be allowed to do more film/workout/walkthrough type things with the players with the NCAA D1 Council passing a recommendation today of 12 hours of meetings/practice/workouts for schools that have postponed competition. For now, Cal's coaches are able to watch some workouts that are in Memorial Stadium, but they haven't been able to get back into the office yet, and their top priority is making sure that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Peter Sirmon had a great term," Wilcox noted, "it’s a military term, they call it ‘alert fatigue,’ when you’re always preparing for something that never comes, (they find) how draining that can be. There’s got to be a balance on the coaches’ part and the players’ part in how we work through this. Saying every day ‘we’re gonna play tomorrow,’ that wears off, and you’ve got to be mindful of how we work through this time, and once we have a little more information on this, we can get them into a schedule, but to keep pulling the rug out, that can be a tough process."

In the wake of of uncertainty, Wilcox noted that it's tough working through this time, but it's a matter of doing their part as they gain information about how a potential spring season and winter build up to the season will work.

"Right now, the guys on campus are, if they’re working out on campus (about 75-80 of them are), it’s on a voluntary basis." Wilcox said, "We’re going to regroup, we talk to them a lot, there’s a lot of communication with meetings and Zoom and whatnot, but in terms of setting a new schedule, we’re gonna look on September 1st as to what happens at the NCAA level so we can put together our plan and go forward from there. In the meantime, a significant number of guys are on campus taking part in the voluntary workouts under the public health guidelines, and they’re doing well. It has been difficult for everybody, for you, for your families, for people’s jobs, and for our players, their lives have been flipped upside down. I’m proud of how they’ve handled it in a difficult time. We’ve had a lot of help along the way with our sports medicine people, our strength and conditioning coaches, all of our sports staff is fantastic, and I’m really thankful to have them. Jim Knowlton’s been unbelievable during a really difficult time, Chancellor Christ has as well. We’re doing the best we can, just trying to take it one day at a time, still looking for that light at the end of the tunnel, we all have our part to do as we work through this."

- All but one of the signed 2020 class are enrolled at Cal and are listed in the campus directory. Tight end DJ Rogers is the sole member of the class not listed, and Wilcox declined to discuss the matter.

"Right now I can't comment on DJ status on the team," Wilcox said

- Wilcox described their efforts in recruiting the 2021 class as a want to cover all the position groups, something they're close to doing with 18 commits in their class.

"When we look back at the beginning of the recruiting cycle," Wilcox said, "we started with the numbers, and you know they move and change, things happen, but we were kinda looking at a starting offense and a starting defense, not to say that they’re going to start, but basically one of everything across the board, and that’s where we started, that’s how it laid out this year based on needs. We’re going to continue to recruit, it’s very competitive as you all know, we’re going to keep recruiting the guys who are committed and keep recruiting others."

- With the lack of uniformity in the decision-making surrounding postponements and teams building up to play, the topic of a college football commissioner came up, something Wilcox is in favor of at the moment.

"I think there’s probably a good reason to (have a college football commissioner)," Wilcox noted, "the challenge is gonna be getting all the conferences on board. I probably haven’t thought enough about it in terms of looking at the positives and negatives, but it makes sense to have a voice that does some of that."

- Wilcox did note they had a couple opt-outs if the season was to be played in the fall, but the players don't necessarily have the information available to make the choice for the spring.

"We’re really pushing the reset button," Wilcox said, "and people will make their decisions going forward, but as for spring and next fall, we haven’t (had any opt-outs), because I think again the seniors are thinking ‘what does it all mean.’ Once we get that information, we’ll share that with them and then they’re going to have to make some decisions, they’re individual at that point, and we’ll be there for them."