COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The first full day of Justin Fields' business trip to Columbus wasn't great. At all.
It was January 2019. It was cold. He knew no one. His parents had dropped him off the day before and driven back home to Atlanta. He couldn't peek in on his social media accounts because his timelines were still freshly filled with a lot of unkind comments from fans of Georgia, the team he'd just left and the uniform he'd just worn at the Sugar Bowl a few days earlier. So he did what teenagers do. He called home and made a little noise about packing up what he'd just unpacked and carrying it all back south.
But his family told him to give it another day. He did, and that day was much better. Some of his new Buckeyes teammates invited him to play basketball, and he had a pretty good time.
The next day brought more basketball and more smiles. Every flip of the calendar page brought another pickup game, another smile and another new friend. Among them was Ohio State's in-house leader, defensive end Chase Young, who threw his massive arms around the new guy and challenged him to be the leader on the offensive side of the ball, to be the guy all of his new teammates had seen flashes of on their TVs and read about back when they were all being recruited.
Eventually, the quarterback joined Young and the others for his first real workouts and film sessions. One by one, he won the Buckeyes over, even those who'd given him the cold shoulder in the QB meeting room. It all took place in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, the building with the lobby packed with seven Heismans, eight national championship trophies, and too many NFL jerseys and headshots of NFL draft picks to count. In January, the residents of the Horseshoe were asking, "Who is this guy from Georgia?" Now they are wondering how many awards he might add to that collection.
Yes, the first day of Justin Fields' business trip to Columbus, it was not great. But every day since has been an improvement on the day before. Now, armed with a 4-0 record, video game statistics (880 yards and 13 TDs passing, 150 yards and six TDs rushing) and a team that feels like his team, the man who wears No. 1 is ready to go to work on the finally arrived heart of his first Big Ten gauntlet.
"We're ready for the task," he said Tuesday ahead of Saturday's prime-time matchup at Nebraska (7:30 p.m. ET on ABC). The game marks the beginning of a month that will include visits from Michigan State, Wisconsin and Maryland along with a trip to Northwestern. "We expect to go out there and do business. This is just another business trip for us."
Fields likes that term: business. He has used the term "business decision" to describe his transfer from Georgia to Ohio State. He has been ripped by many for that choice of words, certainly by those dressed in red and black oval Gs back home in the Peach State. Just this week, he caught flak for revealing that the kid who graduated high school with a 3.9 GPA takes his entire Ohio State academic course load online. The noise grew so loud that on Tuesday, an Ohio State journalism professor jumped to his defense.
"Some people have the idea of what we do ... and they think we're just working out all day and looking at film and working on football all day, that we're just football players," Fields had explained in the media conference in which he talked about his online classes. "And some people think we're just regular students. So it's kind of a mix and match thing. It's really balancing those things out. I'm not sure what people think, but people have different opinions about what we do and kind of how our everyday life goes."
No, Justin Fields doesn't walk to class. He is always either at his apartment or in the Ohio State athletic facilities, a cluster of buildings and venues located on the edge of the main campus. No, he's never casually strolling the quad, taking selfies at Mirror Lake or hitting the bars on High Street. And yes, he likes to use the word "business" when describing what he does or has done in regard to his football present and future.
But if one removes emotion and/or nostalgia from the reaction to all of the above, one will also realize that nothing Fields has said or says is inaccurate -- including business. Is there a more accurate term to depict the life of a kid living within the systematic factory that is college football?
There are plenty who think they know what that world is like. There are many living in that world who think they know what Fields' even smaller corner of that world is like. The reality is that he is one of only a tiny handful of people in the 150-year history of his sport who have ever inhabited the space in which he now exists. It is a once-empty area that is becoming increasingly packed with the likes of Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow, Jacob Eason and Kelly Bryant, all the risk-taking beneficiaries of the post-Russell Wilson age, along with an even larger group of flameouts and those still stuck on depth charts, just in new locations.
Even among that group, it is Fields who stands out.
He was a blue-chip, five-star, nationally ranked quarterback who had his high school games televised on ESPN and a reality-TV crew capturing his every move -- and injury -- for Netflix ... who announced his college decision on live TV in a packed high school football stadium ... who graduated high school a semester early, wearing a cap and gown in a high school classroom ... who was immediately earmarked as the future of the Georgia Bulldogs, one of college football's flagship programs ... who ultimately couldn't beat another five-star reality-show QB in Jake Fromm ... who stepped into the still-new and mysterious ground of the NCAA transfer portal ... and was granted immediate eligibility on the other side of that portal, based in part on evidence that he was the victim of racial slurs from another Georgia athlete ... and every single step of this was dangled and smacked around like a piñata in the age of social media.
"It has not been easy, but Justin is a good kid who has handled it all to the point that you don't call him a kid anymore," said his father, Pablo Fields. "This is all grown-up stuff. He's had to do a lot of growing up. And I think he's done it well."
It is grown-up stuff, and there's no doubt that some of it has been self-inflicted. The Fields family didn't have to sign on for the "QB1: Beyond the Lights" reality show, just as Harrison High School didn't have to agree to an ESPN TV deal. Georgia didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to recruit Fields, Fromm or any other members of its overstocked QB room. Nor did Florida State, Auburn, Penn State or the other dozens of schools that offered Fields scholarships. And the NCAA membership didn't have to construct a new transfer system that would allow him an escape route out of Athens.
But everyone did all of that. They do it all of the time, from the teams to the coaches to the fans to the players to the media (yes, including ESPN). It's a world built to build up kids into believing that they are the next big thing in college and that their next big thing will be the NFL, but then it never hesitates to find ways to make them feel bad for daring to act like they are the next big thing and make them feel guilty for doing what they believed they needed to do to reach the NFL heights they've been sold on since the start of adolescence.
Make no mistake about it. That's why Justin Fields is in Columbus. He will try to win every game he plays at No. 5 Ohio State, and if he does, it will no doubt add more trophies to the bronze-laden walls and display cases of the Hayes Center. But his ultimate goal is to add his NFL jersey to the others that hang alongside those trophies.
Just as Ohio State has promised. And as Georgia promised before that.
"Ryan Day is a head coach with an NFL pedigree and a proven track record of putting players into the NFL, particularly quarterback," ESPN NFL draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. said of Ohio State's first-year head coach. Day is the team's former offensive coordinator who just last year coached quarterback Dwayne Haskins to a 50-touchdown, Rose Bowl season that ended with Haskins becoming the 15th overall pick of the NFL draft. This came after Day's stints in Philadelphia and San Francisco as quarterbacks coach under Chip Kelly, Day's former college coach at New Hampshire.
"There's a reason that Fields talked to Haskins before he decided to transfer to Ohio State," Kiper said. "Haskins gave him plenty of reasons to do so, and that started and ended with Ryan Day."
"Coach Day and Justin, they immediately spoke the same language," Pablo Fields said. "Justin needed someone who could tell him, 'If you do this the right way, then this will help this Saturday, but this will also help you at the next level' from someone who knows. Once we could all tune out the outside noise and focus on football, you see how well they work together."
They are also learning together on the job. Fields is only four games into his tenure as the Buckeyes' starter, and Day is also only four games into his time as Buckeyes head coach, leading a staff with six new full-time coaches. On Tuesday, he acknowledged that he and his QB have both grown a lot in 10 months' time. He also acknowledged that they both have a long way to go, even as the Big Ten autumn is arriving.
"There's still a lot to be learned," Day said. "A lot to see as we get going in these conference games. He has grown for sure, and he will continue to grow. He's got a good approach. He's got a good mindset. But there's got to be some adversity along the way. He's going to have to handle that. That's a fact of all great quarterbacks. They have to handle that the right way ... and he will."
Those closest to Fields would argue that he already has. So would Fields. Even so, he says he wouldn't change a single milestone on the timeline that brought him to Columbus.
"I am fine with the way my life is right now. I wish nothing to be different, how it happened in my life. I'm just trying to embrace all that I do right now. You can't really hope to be somebody else or hope to have a different lifestyle than you have. You just have what you have right now and just make the best out of it. I definitely enjoy my life right now. I just hope to make the best of it."
Justin Fields knows what he is, where he is, where he has been and where he hopes to go. He has tried to pave the road the best he can within the constraints of the college football systems he's currently living with. The next stop on that road is Lincoln, Nebraska. Perhaps one day several months from now, the road will take him into a postseason matchup with Georgia. There are certainly plenty of folks in that state who hope so. They let Fields and his family know it all the time. But the Fieldses don't really hear it anymore.
"As life goes on, you just learn to kind of block that stuff out and just live your life," Justin Fields said. "I will definitely continue to do that."
In other words, this isn't personal. It's business.