It was around the stroke of midnight on January 10 that a new day was born. Not just on the calendar, but for the millions of citizens of the Bulldog Nation.
The glorious happening, the ever-descending buoy we grasped for and never caught, was finally resting firmly before us. There would be no heartbreak, no last-second dramatics. College football’s highest crown was once again upon our head, a mere 41 years after we had last been coronated. The king is dead. Long live the king!
Such appellations might seem ludicrous to the uninformed. Such lofty epithets may appear unearned to those who have not bled with this team for the majority of that heinous drought. If you are new to the world of college football, then this party ain’t for you.
It’s impossible to describe the atmosphere in Athens right now. I realize that the Bulldog Nation spans all over the globe, but this city right here is the capital and nobody has experienced the elation of this championship more than we have.
Driving around town, I still grin quite uncontrollably every time I see a store sign that says, “Go Dawgs!” or “National Champs!” Almost as much as I grin when I see people driving around cars with Alabama stickers on them these days.
My favorite story from the last two weeks, though, is from a routine phone call my wife made at work the Tuesday after the game. She had to reach out to an office in Lawrenceville for something, and she casually mentioned that she was calling from Athens.
“You’re in Athens right now?” the lady on the other end wondered aloud, her voice a gleeful blend of ecstasy and envy. “What’s it like there today?”
After 41 years of waiting, this town has let its colors fly in a spectacular way!
What made the drought so frustrating is that, for a large percentage of the last 41 years, Georgia has actually been good. At times, we’ve been very good.
Sure, there was a rather large window of time from 1984-2001 where Georgia was a perennial also-ran behind the Auburns and Alabamas and the Floridas and…Tennessee? Really? Huh. That’s somewhat shocking. Since UGA’s last national title in 1980, in case you’ve forgotten the year somehow, at least five other SEC teams have won a national championship in football. What’s even more stunning is that most of these teams could probably argue that they should have won more than they did in those intervening years.
Except Alabama. They already claim three extra titles and a lordship in Scotland that they bought online.
So let’s ignore that little stretch from the late 80s through the new millennium for a moment. We know it wasn’t all roses, so no need to recap.
That’s notable Athens resident and future College Football Hall of Fame coach Mark Richt, to you. Respect this man. (Photo by Larry Wynn)
Starting with the hiring of Mark Richt in 2001, Georgia was back on the college football map. He almost went the whole way in just his second season, leading Georgia to a nearly perfect 13-1 season in 2002. Had there been a College Football Playoff at the time, Georgia would have been in the mix and had a stellar shot at winning the whole thing.
But 2002 would prove to be just the first of many “almost had it” seasons for Georgia. We’ve all been hurt enough, so there’s no reason to rehash those sagas of futility. Even if the pain is lessened significantly right now, let’s not cut open old wounds just for the fun of it. My doctor tells me that usually leads to infection and that I should really stop playing with knives, anyway.
No, Georgia has been knocking on the door for most of the last 20 years, making this lack of a true championship even more staggering. I’m not sure when, exactly, the 1980 jokes really took off. Probably somewhere around 1996 or 1998 or 2010. You know, when our rivals all somehow managed to win their first championships in several decades…or first ever, in some gaudy orange and blue cases. But we’ve been inundated with reminders of this futility and beaten down with a repetitive chorus of woe.
And it wouldn’t hurt so much if Georgia had just been bad. Seriously.
Did you know that Yale University has the most college football national championships, with an enviable 18? And their last one was in 1927?
I think next week I’m going to drive myself up to Connecticut and start walking around with a sign that says “1927!” and see how angry I can make the other Bulldogs.
Oh, that’s right. They won’t care. You know why? Because they’re too busy hating poor people. Oh, and because they’re not good at football anymore. Nobody at Yale has any expectation of winning the College Football Playoff anytime soon. Never mind that Yale isn’t even playing FBS football anymore, because that fact might harm my argument a little. So ignore it.
It was the ultimate “Charlie Brown Kicks the Football” story for UGA, and guess what? We finally kicked it.
In the years of futility and pain, many of us had become numb. What other choice did we have? We could either give up fanhood or we could try to protect our hearts because Georgia football had been the bad boy we always think we can improve.
“I promise, Mom. He can change. You’ll see,” we tell ourselves. And our mothers, I guess. And yet, every time, we got burned.
“He said it would be different this time! We would be happy in Jacksonville! He promised we would have fun in Jacksonville!” (Photo by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash)
Whether it was on a cool Saturday afternoon in the fall when we somehow lost to unranked Vanderbilt, or if we made it all the way to the grandest stage and just forgot how to cover deep passes, at some point, we would sneak out back and see our boyfriend smoking a joint and buying blackmarket CDs off a sketchy looking dude wearing a purple tie-dyed bandana. We knew he hadn’t really changed. And we would walk away, pretending we didn’t see him passing counterfeit hundreds and pocketing little bags of oregano.
So we would toughen ourselves up and go in assuming the worst.
If you’re like me, you’ve been burned by more than one local sports team. I’ve lived long enough to see my Atlanta Falcons blow leads in the NFC Championship Game and have one of the most historic meltdowns in all of sports. One of the most popular auto-completes on Google for “Atlanta Braves” used to be “Collapse” with one of seven or eight different years behind it.
Losses come with the territory of being a sports fan, but I don’t think anybody has been as consistently tortured as the Georgia sports fanbases. And we learned to take it on the chin.
My mantra for the last few months has been, “Don’t plan for the win.”
When the Falcons were up 28-3 in the Super Bowl, I remember thinking about how I was going to go downtown for the parade.
When Georgia was leading Alabama in the National Championship back in January 2018, I started planning my trip to the Academy store to pick up a t-shirt immediately after the game was over.
When the Braves took a 3-1 lead in the NLCS on the Dodgers last season, I started thinking about buying World Series gear.
Inevitably, the moment I planned for the win, that was when things always fell apart. Without fail.
“If time is relative, then Bama can somehow still get three possessions out of these last 12 seconds. Right?” (Photo by Artturi Jalli on Unsplash)
So when the Braves were up on the Dodgers this year, I never once hoped. Even when Soler broke land speed records with his blast to put us up 3-0 in the eventual winning game, I never let myself hope. Even when Kelee Ringo came back down to earth with Bryce Young’s pass in his mitts, and even when his feet touched the glorious end zone, I never once let myself believe we were going to win that game.
Instead, I was sitting there imagining all the scenarios that would allow Bama to get the ball back twice and score, hitting a two-point conversion on their first attempt and then breaking our hearts again with a Hail Mary as time expired to send the game into overtime.
I was doing math. Rather than celebrating our first national championship in 41 years, rather than basking in the glow of a near certainty, I was torturing myself with all the ways Nick Saban was about to ruin my life. Again.
And I bet I wasn’t alone.
The worst of it is that I don’t know when I really believed it was over. Certainly not when the clock ran out. I’d always told myself that I would never celebrate until the clock hit zero, but even that didn’t feel final enough.
Maybe it was when I bought my first ever National Championship t-shirt about an hour later. Maybe it was when I rang the famous Chapel Bell at about 3:30am. Maybe it was the seventh time I watched highlights of Ringo’s pick-six. Or maybe the eighth.
“I really just need to buy these tube socks. Isn’t there an express line or something?”
Either way, I wouldn’t let myself believe, and my celebration was the lesser for it.
I have to wonder how much sweeter this championship win would have been if I had just let myself believe all along. Did I miss a chance to experience true euphoria? Can I ever get back the youthful optimism of an unscarred fan? Am I really ready to trust that reformed bad boy who traded his black leather jacket and Marlboros for an argyle sweater vest and a King James Bible?
Next time, I just might let myself hope. Next time, I might just let myself enjoy the moment a little more. Because I know we’ve done it once, and I do believe that there will be a next time.
I’ve mentioned how I never let myself plan for the win. I don’t want anyone else doing it, either. Not when I’m around. When my wife came home from grocery shopping on the day of the SEC Championship Game, she showed me a bottle of sparkling red grape juice. I love Welch’s sparkling red grape juice, and normally I would have been thrilled.
Had she not said, “This is for after we win,” I might have been. Instead, I just shook my head and gently chided her, because I knew in that moment we were going to lose.
I wanted so badly to take the day off after the National Championship Game so I could stay up and watch and celebrate with all the other crazies, but I wasn’t going to plan on beating Michigan just yet. So I refused to let myself ask off for that day…until we won the Orange Bowl.
(Full disclosure: I did let my boss know what I was thinking, but there were several instances of the word “IF” doing some heavy lifting in those conversations.)
Then, when we were in the championship, I never once asked my family if they were coming to Athens to buy championship gear if we won. I would not let myself plan for that moment. I knew they would, I knew it would be best to plan ahead, but there was no way. I wouldn’t do it.
Ring the Bell!
Do you want to know the first thing I did, though, when that clock hit zero?
I ran to the fridge and yanked out that bottle of Welch’s sparkling red grape juice and I chugged the whole thing right then and there. Because I love Welch’s sparkling red grape juice, and because I’d waited far too long to celebrate this moment.
As sweet as that moment of chugging God’s chosen elixir was, I think next time I’ll let myself pour a glass during the fourth quarter. Because there will be a next time.
And it’s not going to take us four decades to get back there, either.
Glory, Glory to Ole Georgia!
Exciting News: So I have some extremely exciting news to tell everyone very soon, but I’m not quite ready to reveal it yet. So I guess this is my way of saying, “Stay posted!” Don’t worry. I’ll be announcing something in the next couple weeks, at the latest, about a project I’ve been working on for a very long time. You will not be disappointed.