It was pure luck that I happened to be in Athens, Georgia, on Nov. 8, 1980. I was on the debate team in high school and there happened to be a tournament on the University of Georgia campus that weekend. We had finished our rounds for the day and were waiting for our scores in an auditorium in the journalism/psychology building. A group in the back was crowded around a radio. Georgia was playing Florida that day. Georgia was undefeated but Florida was winning late in the fourth quarter.
I was enough of a fan to wonder what was going on but not enough of a fan to go back and listen. Somebody passed word from the back that the game was just about over. Georgia was pinned on its own 7-yard line with just a minute left.
Then there was a noise from the back of the room. A collective whooooOOOOOOAAAAAAAA from everybody crowded around the radio, like a dozen sirens going off at once. I could hear the voice of legendary Georgia announcer Larry Munson cutting through the noise, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying.
I have watched the play many times since — more than any other single play in my lifetime, I’m sure. But at the time all I knew was the sound of those teenagers screaming. And then, all of a sudden, another wall of sound outside.
We walked out and saw chaos — UGA students running up and down the streets, hanging out of car windows, climbing trees, hugging one another, making out, rolling on the ground like Pentecostals.
I knew at that moment where I was going to college.
I had followed Georgia football since I was a child, but I didn’t LOVE Georgia football until that moment. All I wanted was something that could connect me with that much joy.
Georgia went on to win the national title that season, three days before my 17th birthday. I figured they’d win one every few years from there on out.
*****
Monday night, with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, I started preparing a concession speech. Something I might put on Twitter and text to my Alabama friends. Georgia’s quarterback, Stetson Bennett, had tried to throw the ball as he was being sacked deep in Georgia’s end of the field. The ball bounced toward the sideline and an Alabama defender, thinking it was an incomplete pass, scooped it up as an afterthought as he jogged out of bounds. But then the referees took another look and decided it was a fumble, and the Alabama player was still in bounds when he grabbed it. Alabama scored a touchdown a few plays later. And the best Georgia team there has ever been was losing to Alabama again.
Sometimes, I thought, you just have to accept that even though you might be good, someone else is always going to be better. Georgia had lost to Alabama seven times in a row. Two of those had been absolute gut punches, games that make you think there must be an alternate universe where things go the other way and your team gets to hold the trophy. I saw a stat on ESPN this morning: Since that 1980 title, Georgia has the ninth-best record in major college football. The eight teams ahead of them had won at least one national title since then. So had the eight teams right behind them. We had our own little island of broken dreams.
And here we were again, same old scene in the same old movie, the one where we always drown at the end.
Except then Georgia went right down the field, four plays, 75 yards, touchdown. We were up by one.
And then we stuffed them on defense and scored another touchdown. We were up by eight.
Now Alabama had to hurry. Their quarterback, Bryce Young, the Heisman Trophy winner, lofted a ball down the left sideline. There was about a minute left, just like in that Florida game all those years ago.
And just like in that Florida game, a Georgia player caught the ball.
*****
I just finished Jason Mott’s National Book Award-winning novel HELL OF A BOOK. One of the many things it’s about is how we gravitate to just about any diversion to keep from really thinking hard about the terrible things going on in the world. I’m not sure it’s a judgment as much as an observation. If you soak yourself in tragedy all day long, you become a tragedy. All of us need a release valve of some kind. Something to care about where the stakes aren’t quite so real. For me that’s been sports.
But here’s the thing about it. If you decide to care about a team — if you decide to care about anything, really — you agree to take the weight of the bad times. Georgia football has brought me a lot of joy over the years. But to have all those great teams for 40 years and never win — that’s a lot of weight. It accumulates. It makes you wonder if you can ever shed it.
I like to couch the words, to talk about “sports love” instead of just love, because I’m a little embarrassed to care so much about a game. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more it feels like the caring is what matters. Don’t love a game to the exclusion of the rest of your life. Love it as part of your life. But let yourself love it. Let the game teach you, if you need to be taught, how much it matters to care.
I care more about my family and my friends than I do about any team or any game. But last night, a minute left in the game, Bryce Young’s pass in the air, I cared a whole lot about where that ball landed. Georgia defensive back Kelee Ringo intercepted the pass at his own 21. I jumped out of my chair and scared the hell out of the cat.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart, on the sideline, yelled at Ringo to fall down so Georgia could run out the clock. But Ringo didn’t hear or didn’t listen. He took off.
One of the great gifts sports gives you, if you’re lucky, is that moment when you know a play has won the game even as the play is still happening. Time compresses and expands and you can see yourself hours from now, still calling and texting your friends, staying up until 3 in the morning talking about this play that is right now still going on, Ringo still churning down the sideline, and then you can see yourself years later, calling up that play to watch it again when you need a little jolt of joy, the same way you did that other play from 41 years ago, the play you first heard secondhand on the radio, in the town with the team that would bring you to this moment.
The weight fell off as he ran. And when he reached the end zone it was gone.
— TT