Dawgs at destiny’s door in season of golden moments. But one thing is rosiest of all
The sun had set here on Monday when, in this most flowered of football settings, Georgia’s season appeared to wilt. The Bulldogs trailed Oklahoma by a touchdown. Time was running out, the light fading on a season burnished in gold.
Might this, I wondered, be the end of the road, the dusk of an unforgettable season?
From an early-season trip to the University of Notre Dame, that Valhalla of college football, and six other arenas in between, the University of Georgia and its legion of followers — a red-and-black-clad troupe of merrymakers (and a hell-raiser or two) — had in four months ventured to Middle America and flown and motored coast to coast. From South Bend, Ind., to Jacksonville, Fla., and now to the Golden State for the Rose Bowl game.
Oklahoma and its Las Vegas magic show of an offense led by Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Baker Mayfield had at times scored at will, and in the fourth quarter led 45-38. An old-fashioned scoreboard clock, one of those from the middle 1900s that is outfitted, mostly for decoration now, with an arrowed single arm that counts down the minutes, edged toward zero.
An hour or so earlier, I had snapped a picture of a cloud-dappled, deep-yellow sunset. I didn’t want to forget it. I’m not one who buys souvenir T-shirts at ballgames. I try to remember moments.
As time slipped away, I thought about late Georgia radio man Larry Munson, who famously implored listeners when seconds were few and victory hung in the balance to “look at the clock!”
And I did. The Bulldogs were driving for a tying touchdown, one that with a minute or so left would send the game to overtime. I, along with 92,000 others on hand, watched running back Nick Chubb take a direct snap from the 2-yard line, angle to his right from the 7 and bowling-ball into the northerly end zone for a score. An extra-point tied the game. I considered the clock.
Not just at that one-armed relic of a countdown timer on the Rose Bowl's south-end scoreboard, but the clock that ticks for us all. The one that knows such times can be fleeting, that decades can come and go and that what-might-have-been seasons are more the norm. Not that I told anyone around me this sappy stuff. In that maelstrom of gnawed fingernails, jangled nerves and breathless prayers on Row 64 in the Rose Bowl’s southeastern corner, I kept it to myself. This is happening. Take it in.
In November, I wrote a piece about the souvenir Coke bottle I keep on my desk. The bottle commemorates UGA’s last national title, one clinched on a January day 37 years ago. It seems about everyone in the state has one of the bottles. But in November, as the real possibility of a championship run crept into view, I figured I’d jinxed it for sure when, a couple of days after my article appeared, Auburn crushed the Bulldogs in what would prove to be Georgia’s only loss. Now the Rose Bowl was drifting into double-overtime. There must have been 50,000-plus Bulldogs fans in the stadium. Millions more were spread across the land, glued to televisions.
And then … triumph.
This time the sky hadn’t fallen. This time the sky was the limit.
“In the final chilling ticks, that sky was filled with a long arm of Georgia’s Lorenzo Carter swatting away a field-goal attempt,” Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke would write for the next morning’s paper. “Moments later it was a sky bursting with raised fists as Georgia’s Sony Michel rumbled across a deep green stretch of the Arroyo Seco for a touchdown.”
The Bulldogs, whose home field, Sanford Stadium, bridges Tanyard Creek, which feeds the North Oconee River and flows on to the Atlantic, had found to their liking the fertile ground here along a seasonal tributary that drains to the Los Angeles River and the Pacific. The Bulldogs of Georgia had run the ball and scored and run the ball some more, forging channel upon channel into the end zones.
It has been 26 years since I graduated from UGA. In nearly two decades of attending most every home game in hopes of experiencing the likes of this, Monday’s win in Pasadena was, as everyone says, worth the wait.
This widely shared embrace for a state and its fans long weary of gridiron almosts was a reminder that these times do not come often. Rejoicings on grand scales and grand stages are rare and, yes, sweetest of all.
As I approach age 50, chances to witness championship seasons are running out. I will be in the rafters of Mercedes-Benz Stadium come Monday. If Georgia bests Alabama and its Crimson Tide, jubilation will flow from the mountains of Hiawassee to the Huddle House in Hahira.
My father, who turns 77 next month, hadn’t yet turned 2 the last time the Bulldogs were in the Rose Bowl. He isn’t the sports nut that I am, but he enjoys the games and has always spoken of the Rose Bowl in reverent tones. No matter who was playing, it was “the Rose Bowl.” When Monday’s game ended in Pasadena, from back home near Perry, he sent me a text message: “Best ballgame I have ever watched.”
I teared up.
David, my stepbrother watching in Georgia, chimed in via text: “I’m crying like a baby.”
Later that night, dad sent another message: “Can’t repeat a historic event like that. Even if we don’t beat Alabama, we defeated the Heisman and won the Granddaddy.”
The Bulldogs had won the Rose Bowl.
Victory had come at 6:17 p.m. West Coast time, and just like that the Bulldogs were bound for a national championship matchup in Atlanta.
I thought about the longtime fans who had not lived to see it. There were no doubt scores of Georgia devotees sensing how loved ones were surely watching from above.
A few days after the game, I called the son of Eddie Hudspeth, the beloved Macon veterinarian who died in May at age 86. Hudspeth was also known for the garden outside his clinic at the intersection of Pio Nono and Roff avenues. He grew, of all things, prize rose bushes. He liked to say that it was impossible to look at the beauty of a rose and not believe there is a God.
Hudspeth first bought season tickets to Georgia games in 1956, the year he graduated from vet school: Section 131, Row 19, on the home 50-yard line.
When I asked Hudspeth’s son, Eddie III, if his father might have been a spectator in Pasadena in spirit, the son said, “I don’t quite know what all you can look down on from heaven, but he’d have been proud.”
The son mentioned how we best soak in life’s glories when they bloom.
“It’s not long,” he added, “the time we have here.”
So savor this blessed occasion, Bulldogs fans, these rosiest of hours.
Hug your kin — even the Bama side, or not — and hold on tight. The ride may be almost over. The memories, though, will travel for generations.
This story was originally published January 5, 2018 at 12:02 PM with the headline "Dawgs at destiny’s door in season of golden moments. But one thing is rosiest of all."