LOS ANGELES — Javon Bullard is from the small town of Milledgeville, which was the capital of Georgia until just after the Civil War. Bullard grew up with Georgia football, known for years for pain and suffering: He was 10 years old when the 5-yards-short game happened. He was 15 when second-and-26 happened.
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And he was 20 years old when he was defensive MVP of Monday’s national championship game, the second straight for Georgia, completing the program’s transition from a tortured existence to the standard in college football.
“I couldn’t dream this big,” Bullard said Tuesday morning, smiling and shaking his head. “It means the world to me. And I know it means the world to Coach Smart too.”
That would be Kirby Smart, who also grew up in the state, was called back home to end what became four decades of disappointment and has pulled it off in a fashion the fan base only dreamed of.
“It’s been a state starved for success and for something good to happen,” Smart said, sitting a few feet away from the national championship trophy. “It usually happens in cycles. You go through these cycles of times where you could be successful, and right now we’ve got a good thing going.”
Two straight titles. The first was about ending a 41-year drought. The second was (in large part) about making Stetson Bennett a legend. And a little-appreciated reason Bennett’s story resonates with the Georgia fan base is it closely mirrors what the program has gone through. The wilderness the Bulldogs walked through for much of the late 1980s and 1990s. Mark Richt getting the program achingly close but not quite there. Watching its rivals win championships: Florida won one with Steve Spurrier and two with Urban Meyer. Tennessee won the year after Peyton Manning left. Auburn won in Cam Newton’s stopover in 2010 then almost won another three years later. LSU won three championships with three different coaches.
And Alabama, oh, Alabama.
Even when Georgia imported a key man from Alabama — Smart — there were times people wondered. The way Smart’s first national championship game appearance ended (an overtime loss to Alabama) was perhaps the most painful way possible, and then more painful losses piled up, more questions about whether Smart and his program would ever get over the hump.
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And now this. The celebration had a chance to be muted: The big one was last year, the giant exhale after more than 40 years of suffering. But all that suffering was why downtown Athens again looked like the Widespread Panic 1998 concert. It’s why tens of thousands of Georgia fans made the trek to Los Angeles and remained standing inside SoFi Stadium long after the game went final. It’s why Smart allowed himself to be caught on camera holding up one finger, then two, then three, the meaning so clear.
The quest for a three-peat also provides a storyline that the second title run didn’t have. Yes, it had been a decade since someone had repeated. But it has been almost 90 years since there has been a three-peat (We all obviously remember the immortal Minnesota dynasty of 1934-36). Now it’s an opportunity for Georgia. This coming year doesn’t have to just be about the process and other boring platitudes. It can be about something truly historic.
And maybe one more title can quiet anyone who claims the first title wouldn’t have happened if Alabama’s receivers had been healthy and the second title wouldn’t have happened if Ohio State’s star receiver didn’t get hurt.
Even that, however, is symbolic: Karma shifted in Georgia’s direction. Before, everything seemed to go wrong. Star players suspended for breaking silly NCAA rules that are no longer rules. Season-ending injuries to key players. Literal bad bounces that lost games to Alabama and Auburn.
So when Georgia fans see Bennett celebrating the way he has as his career wound down, they may have seen themselves in him. And it’s why when he blew off the customary Tuesday morning champions news conference, even media members laughed, rather than complain. Bennett, for all he went through, deserved to revel in it. So did his program.
Amanda Mull, a writer for The Atlantic and a Georgia native and fan of the team, summed it up with a tweet-thread Monday before the game:
also it's weird to be so clearly the bad guys in a game. before we won last year, it was pretty easy to make a plausible case to a neutral observer to root for us in these situations bc they were almost always against teams who had very recent championships! but now that's us.
— Amanda Mull (@amandamull) January 9, 2023
This doesn’t mean Georgia fans deserve to be unclassy about it. They more than anyone else know what it’s like to be on the other end of fortune. Smart also handles this part of it well, showing personality without tending to say or do anything that ticks off opposing coaches. The pregame and halftime speeches that keep getting leaked show his fire but never quite cross the line to firebombing the opposing coach or team. It’s what many coaches say in the locker room, just with more creative cursing.
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Smart also realizes the trick is now staying at the mountaintop. That is not automatic, and there will be arguments that Alabama hasn’t quite ceded that spot. It’s only two years. Nick Saban may have had to sit silent on national TV as David Pollack, ESPN commentator and Georgia legend himself, pronounced his alma mater the top program in America. But Saban just presided over the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class.
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Georgia, meanwhile, may be the preseason No. 1 for most people for the 2023 season. But it also has plenty to replace, including at the game’s most important position. (Yes, we’ve gone from wondering if Georgia could win a national title with Bennett at quarterback to wondering if it can win another without him.)
“We got a lot of guys coming back,” Smart said after the game, then added as he pointed his head toward Bennett, seated next to him: “Unfortunately this one right here is not.”
Jalen Carter, the best player on the defense, also won’t be back. Kelee Ringo, the hero of the first national championship, also has declared for the NFL Draft, and multiple others are expected to do the same shortly: tight end Darnell Washington and possibly three starting offensive linemen (tackles Broderick Jones and Warren McClendon and center Sedrick Van Pran).
Even with so many others set to return, Smart, ever the worrier, found a way to make that a potential negative.
“The biggest challenge is the same as in the world we live in today, the society we live in — entitlement,” Smart said. “The minute you think you’re entitled to winning games and you don’t have to work hard … the uphill battle for those guys is you think that you just inherit success. And I personally think next year is going to be a much more difficult challenge over this year because we had so many guys leaving last year.”
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It’s the epitome of a good problem to have: too many players who are used to winning championships; too much talk of dynasties and history and three-peats.
One finger.
Two fingers.
Three …
On the final episode of “The Office,” the character Andy Bernard looks at the camera and says: “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.”
Georgia is in the good old days. And it was a long time coming.
(Top photo of Javon Bullard: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
