Things to know about Ohio State QB Justin Fields

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Typically when an NCAA athlete transfers to a different school, they have to sit out for a season. Fields found a way around that when he transferred to Ohio State, though.

Fields requested a waiver to make him immediately eligible when he arrived at Ohio State. He hired Thomas Mars as his attorney, who argued that Fields should be granted immediate eligibility to play at Ohio State because of an incident that occurred while he was at Georgia. Per Sports Illustrated, Bulldogs baseball player Adam Sasser directed a racial slur at Fields during Georgia’s football game against Tennessee.

Under NCAA transfer guidelines, a transfer player does not have to miss a year if “the transfer is due to documented mitigating circumstances that are outside the student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety, and well-being of the student-athlete.”

As a result, Fields was granted the waiver and was eligible to play in his first season at Ohio State in 2019.