Cal's most pressing order of business this offseason, after hiring three new offensive coaches, was to find a quarterback.

Jack Plummer, the Golden Bears' 2022 starter, and his backup Kai Millner both left the program via the transfer portal, and so for weeks Cal was linked to one quarterback and then another. Names floated around while curiosity mounted as to who would take the reins in 2023.

Then, the day after TCU lost in the national championship game, Horned Frogs reserve quarterback Sam Jackson V -- who had sat for two seasons behind 2022 Heisman runner-up Max Duggan (and Chandler Morris) -- entered the transfer portal.

New Cal offensive coordinator Jake Spavital immediately honed in on Jackson as the guy.

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"I feel like, honestly, Sam wasted a lot of my time recruiting other quarterbacks," Spavital joked. "He entered the portal after the national championship game and that went pretty quickly and he committed to us because he had to make a decision. I think it kind of helped us too because a lot of schools had already started their semesters. ... There were a lot of schools that were hitting him up, and we ended up escalating that, and once he did commit all the other guys that were close to committing or committed went to other schools. ...

"I was just going through the phase of just trying to find the best available guy I could get my hands on, just so I could have a quality guy in the spring. By luck, we ended up getting a guy with the skill set of Sam."

With Spavital and a retooled offensive staff in place plus a slew of transfer newcomers, spring practice -- which starts March 11 -- will have no shortage of intriguing storylines.

No. 1 at the top of that list is Jackson, who has a very limited but compelling sample size of experience at the college level as he completed all 6 of his passes for 140 yards while adding 15 rushes for 79 yards and 2 touchdowns on the ground in his time at TCU.

It was enough to immediately convince the Cal coaches that he was the answer to their most important offseason question.

"I saw Sam and he was literally the best available guy. Like, man, he's a really good player," Spavital said.