College football free agency is here, and the sport is going to be a lot better for it. If you’ve been out of the college football world since Dabo Swinney bullied Nick Saban in the national title game, a lot has happened. It’s been a wild offseason so far from a transfer standpoint, but what happened last week may have set a huge precedent moving forward.
In case you missed it, here’s what went down. Justin Fields, the No. 1 recruit in the class of 2018 recruiting class, played sparingly as a freshman for Georgia last season because Jake Fromm had an incredible year.
With Fromm entrenched as the starter, it made sense Fields would not want to be a backup quarterback for two seasons when he could be starting at just about any place in the country. He entered the transfer portal where schools get to recruit kids who are considering a transfer. He ended at Ohio State, which is trying to replace Dwayne Haskins.
In the past, players have received a waiver from the NCAA that guarantees them immediate eligibility, but that was a rarity. The general rule has always been if you transfer and have not yet graduated, you sit out a year. This was not the case for Fields as the NCAA ruled him eligible immediately to play for Ohio State this fall.
Not all the details have come out yet if they ever will, but lots of people are pointing to an incident that happened in September. During a Georgia football game, a player on the school’s baseball team used a racial slur by yelling, “Put the [bad word] in” from the stands, referring to Fields.
If the precedent is now that if somebody calls you a bad word, you’re eligible to transfer without penalty, this should open up the floodgates of kids transferring at a high rate for any type of reason. When Fields transferred to Ohio State, the guy who expected to be the Buckeyes’ starter going into 2019, Tate Martell, left for Miami. He is already working on a case to become eligible for the fall by arguing last year’s scandal of the season with Urban Meyer and the coaching change that came after.
Martell should be able to play right away even though that is not really the reason he transferred. He likely transferred because Fields is going to be the starter, and Martell would be the backup – just like Fields, who transferred because he was going to be the backup to Fromm.
College football is a better product with what will essentially be free agency with players leaving for opportunities to play. It also gives me things to write about during the offseason, so I love everything about this.
More and more quarterbacks are going to be able to find schools to play for by transferring, and this could be an end to the idea of quarterbacks waiting two or three years before seeing the field. If this trend continues, which I think it will, the best quarterbacks will be on the field every Saturday. This is a great thing for players, it’s a good thing for fans and it’s a good thing for college football.
So enjoy the college football free agency, and be nice to the quarterback on your favorite team. Otherwise, your team’s best player might be next.
Send Erik Buchinger your college football tips, thoughts and game day stories, photos or videos to @DeceptiveSpeed on Twitter or email erikbuchingermedia@gmail.com.
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