PASADENA — It’s the wrong side of midnight here, which makes it insanely early back home, where my body clock resides. I should be asleep. I have to be at the airport in less than five hours.
But I can’t sleep. I’m too keyed up. I have visions of Sony Michel running through my head.
From our seats at the famed Rose Bowl Stadium, we were looking right down the sideline where Sony made his cut and, aided by a great block from his quarterback Jake Fromm, sprinted toward the end zone. Running right toward us.
Of course, I never saw Sony cross the goal line. As soon as he made his cut, we knew it was over. The whole Rose Bowl crowd, save a little pocket of Sooners over behind their band, erupted like Mount Etna.
My buddy Kurtz and I, who’ve seen more bad Georgia football than we like to talk about, shared a knowing look, then a long embrace. This, this right here, is why we started buying season tickets three decades ago, to see our team win big, meaningful games on a national stage, and now it was happening. Everyone was hugging and high-diving. And they were screaming. Loudly. Man, was it deafening.
And, yes, there were tears. Lots of them and I’m not afraid to tell it. A friend sitting in the next section fought through the crowd to celebrate with us. He was crying, too. Forty-five minutes after Sony’s run, most of the Georgia fans were still inside the Rose Bowl. How do you leave a place where that just happened?
The whole year has been amazing, actually. Georgia fans invaded South Bend in our first-ever visit to the home office of college football. We took out years of frustration on Tennessee and Florida. We whipped the Yellow Jackets in their home stadium. We avenged our only loss of the year, beating Auburn in the SEC championship. And then we got invited to the granddaddy of them all.
It’s has cost us an arm and a leg — and at one point I thought I might also have to sell a kidney— to get out here. But we had to be here. Win or lose, this was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities we’d forever regret missing. And it was worth every penny we spent.
We did the touristy things, of course. We hiked up to the Hollywood sign. I had my picture taken with my pretend girlfriend Sandra Bullock’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We took in the Rose Parade, one of the country’s most iconic events.
And then the game. Oh, the glorious, delicious, stunning, frustrating, satisfying, one-for-the-ages game.
In the first half, it didn’t look good. As discombobulated as the offense seemed — save Sony and Nick Chubb — the defense was worse. Baker Mayfield looked as good as advertised, and Oklahoma had what might have been a comfortable lead at halftime.
But then the second half came. And the running backs kept running. Roquan Smith started doing Roquan Smith things. Dominick Sanders picked off a Mayfield pass and returned it to the Georgia 4. Lorenzo Carter got his big hands on a Sooner field goal in the second overtime, just enough to deflect it. And then Sony made his cut.
Surely somewhere in some corner of Heaven, Larry Munson is smiling, cigar in hand, and telling St. Peter, “The defense saved our whatchamacallit, didn’t they?”
Now we get Bama and I’m confident Kirby & Co. will have the Dawgs ready.
If we can find a way to win, it’ll be the game of a lifetime, an obsession born from a wide-eyed 5-year-old on his first trip Between the Hedges in 1969 to a game with the national by-god championship on the line.
If I’m dreaming, y’all let me sleep. I really want to see how this turns out.
