Georgia-Alabama 2022 CFP National Championship with Jeremiah Johnson

Kirby Smart is on the sideline run and beside him screaming like go down go down and then at some point he sees he looks up

There's open field and he's like okay

Georgia Bulldogs first the Alabama Crimson Tide for the college football natty

This is remember that game

The podcast about sporting events that take you on a journey and

Maybe try the path of the zeitgeist

I'm your host Thomas Semmerick and my guest is Jeremiah Johnson

creator of the infinite scroll news letter on sub-stack on the politics and dynamics of the social internet

also creator of the Center for new liberalism and

Corresponding show the new liberal podcast

Folks may have come across his annual worst tweets bracket that comes out every December

We'll flip over to January of 2022 the title game

Jeremiah as a millennial Georgia Bulldog

Who else could you find standing in the way then?

I mean most of the SEC most of college football. I I was born in the 80s the late 80s and

Most of my childhood being a Georgia football fan was an exercise in frustration

Georgia was

This team that everybody thought should be good and

Just was always kind of always the bridesmaid never the bride got close a bunch of times had a bunch of good teams

But had not been able to win a national championship since 1980 when they had Herschel Walker

And that was the magical year

But since 1980 it had been 40 years of

Having good football teams while never really having one that was great never having one that was good enough to really get over the hump

And it was you know one heartbreak after another so

Being a Georgia fan was an interesting experience growing up and that we were always good but never quite good enough and

And Alabama for a long time was was really the boogie man

Bama had won six of the previous 12 national titles

Georgia nonsense

1980

Technically near's day 81 when they clinched it in the sugar bull

Herschel Walker was MVP of that game, but 42 years passed by and he's running a whole touchdown behind the national

Environment and sent it wins above replacement for 2022 a four-decade

Interregnum between Bulldog banners from

80 81 to

2021 2022

During which you have nearby programs doing better like you mentioned some of them Florida, Bama, Clemson

Georgia Tech was better in the 90s

Jeremiah, how'd you get to be in a UGA fan?

I just grew up that way it was always in my family. I was going to

Georgia games from the time I was five or six years old

Some of my earliest memories going down to Athens. I lived in the metro Atlanta area

And I would we would take down a couple our trip to Athens

You know tailgate before the games. It was just always in my family, but like you're totally right that you know

Part of the pain of being a Georgia fan was not just that we could never really get over the hump

It's that everybody else was, you know the the University of Tennessee to our north want a title. I believe in 1998

Florida won a title in the 90s with Steve Spurrier and then won two more I think under urban Meyer and

Alabama and Auburn both won titles

Like every Clemson had won titles every state that surrounded us basically had teams winning national titles

This was the Renaissance of Southern College football the SEC had some time period where it was like the SEC

One seven or eight national titles in a row from various teams and none of them were us and that sucked

And it was just I don't know man

It was I remember like the 2012

SEC championship was Georgia versus Alabama and

It came down to the last play where Georgia was down by four points and

was close and

We threw the ball and we got a pass completed to like the two yard line and

Time ran out. That was the final play and if we had gotten two more yards if we had had 15 more seconds

We probably win that game and go on to win the national title because

Alabama and us in 2012. I believe we're like the

Best and second best team in the country

Alabama what went on to crush Notre Dame in the national championship game easily and

It just happened over and over we had gotten to the national championship in 2018

But again

Alabama beat us

Alabama was also there in the national championship and again, they were in the way and

They just they broke our hearts and over time and it kind of felt like we would number one

We would never get over the hump and number two

It was always going to be Alabama

Standing in the way there. I think by the time this this kind of 2021

Championship game comes about

Georgia had lost seven straight games to Alabama and

In virtually every single one of those games Georgia was a top five team and

We just kept losing to Alabama anyway seven times in a row and usually more than half of those were

Either the SEC championship or the national championship. It was just

It felt like we were stuck in purgatory. It felt like we were never going to get out

2016 when they move on from

Rick's to

Kirby smart

Who they hire from under Nick Sabin his staff at Alabama within three years they

Lose the nadi to Bama by three in 2018 now go another three years to

2021 where smart drops to own four against his former boss and

They're entering the SEC title number one, but lose to Bama there in 2021

Yeah, no, it was it that's it's crazy because this year in the 2021 season

Georgia had been number one most of the year we had looked like

Unbeatable. We were playing so well

We had one of the best defenses in in the history of college football frankly

Certainly one of the best defenses in the last decade or two decades and just beating the crap out of everybody

Number one and we go into the SEC championship game undefeated play Alabama and

lose

Again, and it just felt like hopeless. It felt like this is this is the monkey. We will never get off our backs

But we still we got into the college football playoff anyway because we it was our only loss and

Yeah, and set up a rematch in the championship game that loss kicks them from the one four game to the two three game

Alabama would win the one four against

University of Cincinnati while Georgia would have to play Michigan out of the big 10 and they take care of business pretty

Handily, but big 10 on the come-up in the year since

2021 we have NIL you have geographic expansion you have the maturity of their media network

Does that put fear in your heart as an SEC fan and not only is Michigan a house state?

You know, are they winning titles but now even Indiana is a national champion out of the big 10

I mean, I thought it was great that Indiana got a title who wouldn't love that story right if it's if it's not

Gonna be Georgia then why not somebody like Indiana who is the worst team in the history of college football the coming into this season

I think they had the most losses of anyone in the history of college football and

They have this perfect this undefeated perfect season like good for them and their fans probably thought they would never see something like that

You know three years ago being an Indiana fan. You were probably just praying to go six and six and make a bowl game

Awesome for them, you know, I'd rather it'd be them than like Ohio State

It is interesting how

NIL has changed college football because it is a very different sport now like

The Georgia titles in 21 and 22 were kind of like the

At the precipice of a new era we weren't fully in the modern era yet the transfer portal was starting to be a thing

But it wasn't yet as as crazy as it is now where you know half the team of of certain teams transfers every single year

We were getting like a little bit of transferring back then and NIL was not really a big factor yet

And I think kind of like the way this used to work was that it used to really matter that you had like a network of good old boys who would pay for

You know stuff and everybody paid players under the table

If you got caught you were just doing it badly, but like this was a thing that happened everywhere with a big football tradition

But I think what NIL did was it kind of moved us away from that network of good old boys who did things very informally

And you know, you would have a bunch of local successful business men kind of

Paying into this kind of thing and it moved it more towards the model of like you need a whale

You need a billionaire and you know the fact that Indiana has no network of

Good old boy football boosters doesn't matter because they have Mark Cuban

Who is richer than all the good old boys in Alabama combined and so like it

Mark Cuban can just fund the whole thing by himself and he did

You know all of India basically all of Indiana's NIL comes from Mark Cuban

But like it does you know, it doesn't matter that the absence of tradition

Used to be a really really big factor and a really big handicap for places like Indiana

And it's just not anymore and you know

You can talk about whether or not this kind of takes out some of the soul of college football that

And that the the players are now like independent contractors on year-to-year contracts and

Loyalty is kind of dead and like

You can talk about that

But it I don't know it's um

It's definitely changed things a lot. It's it's enabled a much

More flattened playing field, I think I would be surprised if there's another school that goes like

You know six titles and twelve twelve years

Just please give me some geographic coherence lots if we if we need to

Take some teams out of the big ten the Atlantic coast conference has two teams in California

Which is I would be lying if I said that this all doesn't affect me a little bit because there there's something special about college sports

where you know

The tradition in the loyalty or what matters because obviously the players in college basketball and college football are not as good as the professionals

They're younger. They're less experienced the professional game is a better product in both instances

But you have a personal tie

To a university in a way that you really don't with like you know your city's football team and at least growing up in the south

That's how it was maybe maybe people in the northeast people in like Philly and Boston and New York

They they're more attached to their professional sports teams, you know

College sports are not as big of a thing up there maybe

but in the south it's just

The

The tradition and the the pump and the circumstance and the pageantry of it all is really important and and part of that is the history the regionalism of it

The fact that for a long time in college football

There was no national championship

You just played some bowl games and then people voted and argued at the end of the year and like maybe maybe

Four different teams would have a claim to the championship who knows it was all like that's part of the

Part of what made it special

And I'm kind of grappling with like two ideas which is like number one

The players do deserve to get paid

They deserve to be paid because this is a machine that now, you know

It's not the 1960s anymore in the 1960s. I don't think it would have mattered as much

But and in the modern age people are making tens of billions of dollars off of this sport

And the players used to be getting none of it and that's clearly just morally wrong that you build the sport on their backs and their

You know sacrificing their bodies and they're getting none of the

Revenue from that like that is untenable and it was wrong and I'm glad the players are getting paid

but it also just like

The way that like right now players are total free agents every single year and you'll see

You know a small school have an unexpectedly good year

And immediately all of their players leave

And every like half their team will just leave in the transfer portal and the small school will go back to being terrible

Because they can't afford to pay them all and they just all get poached and you know players

I don't know there's something about how the the free agent nature of it the it makes it so mercenary

that it does kind of destroy

The the tradition and the pageantry that made it special

And you know the part of that is conference realignment too. Yeah that you know what why are

UCLA and Rutgers in the same conference like it used to be special that the west coast teams would play all the west coast teams

And the northeast would play the northeast and

I don't know I struggle with both those things thinking that people should be paid but that college football is not what it used to be and

Like I don't know what the solution is maybe we just need to turn it into a fully

semi-professional sport you know in the sense that like

Have multi-year contracts like every other sport does like every other sport on the planet

You have multi-year contracts right you sign for an NFL team. You're there for four years or three years or whatever

You sign for an NBA team or a European soccer team or whatever

It's multiple years and maybe that's what college football needs as well, but I do think something will have to be done soon

Before a lot of this gop creep with conference geography began or really got into full gear

We had the national championship between Baman, Georgia, Georgia, two and a half point favorites January 10th, 2022

Top three Twitter terms that day were Flores Brian Flores have been fired by the dolphins

Raiders who had just clinched a playoff birth on Sunday night football and hashtag go dogs

Normal stuff Jeremiah in your annual worst tweets bracket with four regions

You illuminate the primary vectors of social media brain rot in the year that was four regions

slash categories of terminally online posts get voted on and bad social media posts can happen to anyone

Especially in 2021

Do you think that was the peak year for please touch grass

Types of social media interactions being near the tail end of isolation and all

You know, that's a good question. I

That was near peak Twitter because Elon had not bought the site yet

We were we were coming out of covid. I really think kind of the most touch grass era really does

Belong to kind of that early covid era of like people literally needed to get outside

the nation went kind of crazy from all being cooped up and

and it was like

It was also before tiktok had really become like a massive cultural force like tiktok existed at that point, but

It um

It had not yet really overtaken Twitter in terms of influence. It was it was on its way

It was a maybe around

I don't know 2022 that tiktok. I feel like really started to overtake

Twitter in terms of influence

But that that might have been peak Twitter, you know pre-ealon

slightly post-COVID but not really fully out of it

um just the the center of national discourse and

It in all the good and bad

Ways that that implies you know really fun experience to be on there in some ways

But also

Not good for us. Not good for our

Political climate or you know, frankly our mental health. So

It's tough to nail it down, but that would have been close

Again the annual worst tweets bracket great tool for introspection even

You know, it could happen to any of us that that brain poisoning of being online a little too much

Are we generally on an upward or downward trajectory trajectory here in 2026?

Oh the fully downward. Oh, I don't even think it's a question. I mean we're posting crazier

We are the

The internet has destroyed so much and and really social media has destroyed so much

of our ability to reason of our political climate, you know, the

I wrote a piece a few years back called um

The internet is for extremism

Because I believe that social media and the internet more generally

structurally encourage extremism in almost everything they do

And like I'll use a non-political example before I get super political

But like are you familiar with mr. Beast?

I used people to do random stuff right

He's the biggest youtuber in the world. He's probably the biggest social media influencer personality in the world

He has like 300 or 400 million youtube subscribers and just an equally insane number on tiktok and every other platform

and

The thing that made him famous his first like really big breakout video

was

When he was a small youtuber because he hadn't broke out yet and he was he had had a couple little things

He was starting to get a little bit of attention and so he was starting to get

Some sponsors getting interest and he had one sponsor that wanted to sponsor a video

And they said we'll give you $5,000 like what's your video idea?

And he went to them and he said

What I want you to do is to give me twice that I want you to give me $10,000 because it's a bigger rounder number

And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna give the $10,000 to a homeless person on the street

And I promise you it will go viral

And he had to like argue with them for like hours to get them to double the money

And he was like it has to be $5,000 doesn't work. It has to be $10,000. I'm gonna give it to someone

I'm gonna film it. It's good. I promise you will go viral and it did it was his first really big viral video

And he had this instinct that like you just have to go big

And the next video he did was

I gave $20,000 to a guy on the street

And then he started giving away $40,000 and $50,000 and he started giving away Lamborghini's

And he started giving it at one point. He gave away a full house

He found a homeless person on the street and said would you like a house

And like walked them over to a house and gave them a full house

And the thing that he realized that is his particular form of demented genius

Is that you just have to go bigger

Everything on his channel is the biggest the most

You know, why would I watch someone give $500 to a homeless person when I could watch them give $50,000 to a homeless person

Why would I watch someone bake a 10 pound cake when I when you know Mr. Beast is over there baking a 500 pound cake the world's largest cake

You know, everything he does is of that style

Because why would you ever settle for second best you have access to everything on the internet

And that I think

Is the same way the internet influences our politics

Why would you be a little bit to the left if you could be way to the left if you could be the most to the left

Why would you be a little bit to the right if you could be the most to the right if you could be

The most edgy the most racist the most communist the most of anything the only way to stand out the only way to get attention

Is to

Just be the biggest and most extreme version of whatever you're doing

I think that's just a structural feature of how social media works and it's why everything

is terrible right now.

Folks can check out Jeremiah's musings and all these things at infinite scroll on sub-stack.

If you're as brain poised and desired by that then we come on in, the water's fine.

Yeah, I've fully brain-diseased after being on social media in various forums since the

mid-2000s and during that time Nick Sabin had won six titles, he's looking for a seventh

at Bama and it starts off bad for him seemingly.

Price Young has Jordan Davis in his face unexpectedly early first drive, ball hits the ground, Georgia

takes it back but review turns out Price Young had gotten it out as an incomplete pass and

then Alabama puts three on the board after driving down with relative ease and Georgia quickly

punts.

Are you in the, oh no, it's happening all over again against Bama, a mental state there

at that point.

I was not panicked yet at that point, you know, a fuel-gold down was nothing compared

to like the pain that we've had, like I'm the kind of fan who as long as we're within

shooting distance, as long as we're within like a score, I'm going to be okay, I'm still

think trying to think positively, I was a little cheesed that we didn't get this touchdown

because I still kind of think that it should have been like we should have gotten that

touchdown that he had not actually been, one of those like, is it a forward pass or did

he fumble, it's on the line, I thought it was kind of BS that they called it a fumble,

like you can tell I'm still working the rafts like years later, but yeah, at that point

I was, I was still like, it's okay, it's still the first quarter, you know, we're fine,

it's going to be okay.

Yeah, overturned.

Jordan Davis, nice job of blowing through the line there and he and Jalen Carter, he's

part of keeping them in this, along with a front seven, as Nolan Smith and Kobe Dean,

a lot of players from this Georgia side would, no, not only go pro, but going their early

rounds.

That defense man, we got to talk about that defense for a second because I believe they

had five first round picks in the NFL draft that year and five defensive players all picked

in the first round and that actually kind of understates how good they were because

the next year they had two guys drafted from the defense in the first round, so that defense

is playing with seven first round draft picks and, and, and, Nikobe Dean was not one of

them.

Nikobe Dean might have been the second best player on the defense.

He was not drafted till the third round.

I believe because teams were, he was, he had torn his pectoral muscle and he didn't, there

was like a dispute about like, should he get surgery, should he not get surgery?

He was like, I don't want to get surgery.

So teams were like, well, we're scared of your injury.

We dropped to the third round, but like effectively, this team was working off like eight or

nine virtually eight or nine defensive players who ended up being drafted in the first

round.

It was, it was an obscene amount of defensive talent.

It was just unbelievable, really.

And a lot of them go to the Eagles, George Davis, Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith, Nikobe Dean,

Teely Ringo, some of them, you look a stealth Eagles fan, a little bit of, you're in a

little office country when you grew up, but you move over to, I never really cared much

about the Falcons.

Like again, it's, I feel like in Georgia, this is just how it is that you care more about

the Georgia Bulldogs than you do about the Falcons.

This is, I think, pretty common.

If you ask people in Tennessee, would do they care more about the University of Tennessee

or the Tennessee Titans, like, there's more Tennessee volunteer fans than there are

Titans fans.

And I just think that's kind of how it is.

But no, I kind of, like, I was cheering for the Eagles when they won the Super Bowl a few

years ago because they had so many Bulldogs on the team.

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The volunteers, as you mentioned, they won a national title.

They did it with T Martin and Georgia has their own T Martin here with Stetson Bennett.

Struggles early, I mean, Sabin going after him, Christian Harris, an off ball blitz to get

right after him as soon as he pulls the ball and play action.

And it's a little shaky to start off eventually a bomb to George Pickens shows signs of offensive

life.

That's quite a receiving core there with Pickens, Burton, Ed and I Mitchell, Lad McConkey, Brock

Bowers.

Tight end.

He'll make a huge play.

There are no Washington on that team too.

Yeah.

Who's with the Steelers now, I believe, yeah.

Is there one that jumped out to you immediately like this more than the other ones like this

guy's definitely going to be started in the NFL?

I would say Pickens and Bowers.

Bowers was immediately just immediately the best player at his position.

That was his freshman year, I think.

And he was immediately the best tight end in the country.

It was really, really crazy how he came in and was just immediately the best player

on the field sometimes.

And he didn't he didn't actually win the whatever the tight end award is called in 2021.

And it was absurd.

Like I think they just gave it to someone else because they didn't want to give it to

a freshman.

He wanted his sophomore and junior year, but like he he was the best tight end in the country

all three years.

Like as soon as he stepped on campus, he was one of the best players in college football.

You could just he was special man.

We would we would run jet sweeps for a tight end.

And he would take them to the house for touchdowns.

Like that's what what tight end ever gets a jet sweep called for him.

It's it's insane.

And then George Pickens was just a guy who while he was at Georgia, he struggled a little

bit, but it was always struggling with like injuries or he had one time when he got suspended

for a couple games because he got he fought another like he fought a Georgia tech player,

I think at one point.

But like when he was on the field, you could tell that he had like special special ability.

Yeah.

And he had been pickens had been hurt that whole year.

He basically did not play the whole year until the national championship game.

And then he I think even then he wasn't full.

He wasn't a hundred percent in that game.

He caught the one pass, but I think that's that's basically the only pass he caught that

game, I believe.

Yeah.

Look in a little androgenic or the latest top ranked there.

They're going to be people listening to this who have absolutely no idea what we're talking

about.

We mentioned brain poison earlier.

And if you if you don't know what the Chad rankings are, just escape now, you do not

need your brain to be that poisoned by the internet, just get out while you can.

And some ways could the trials and travails of Will Stansel or the latest top ranked Chad

heal America's brain.

I mean, Will Stansel very obviously has a political faction.

It's just that he fights with lots of different people.

He fights with people on the left and the right.

I have no idea how clavicular represents anything in terms of our modern politics other than

like I said, a form of extremism, you know, it's not enough that I'm a young guy who wants

to look handsome.

I have to be the most handsome.

I have to climb the online Chad rankings, you know, these are like clavicular is 18 years

old taking testosterone because he thinks he's not manly looking enough.

This is a group.

This is like a subculture of people who do something called bone smashing, which is where

you like hit your face with a hammer.

Not for me.

Over and over.

So under the theory that it will like harden your bones that you can get like a more prominent

chin, you know, to be a better a bigger Chad, a bit more attractive looking man.

If you literally hit your chin with a hammer and cause it like micro fractures and your

chin will grow back bigger and you'll have like it's the internet functionally drives

us insane.

And that's like this is just that's all I think about when I think about clavicular is

it's another way that this like extremism is just everywhere online.

Even in things that you don't think of as extremist, do you think in any way it's a nothing

new under the sun thing is like read read rest professional wrestling from the late 90s

which is also crazy.

Yeah, it's what's interesting about it is this is obviously professional wrestling or

you know, alternatively it's a soap opera because soap operas and professional wrestling

are the same thing.

Just gender swapped.

But like soap operas and professional wrestling, if you think about the 80s and the 90s

we're very centrally controlled.

There's a group of writers who are determining plot lines and storylines and who's going

to win, who's going to lose, who's going to be the hero, who's going to be the villain.

This is like decentralized, you know, storytelling.

Nobody is plan there's no central authority planning any of this.

There's just clips.

There's an army of like clip horrors basically who watch all these live streams that these

people do and they find the best moments and they clip it and they send it out on TikTok

and Twitter and Reels and you know, put it on different subreddits and the crowd decides

who they like and who they don't like and who's the villain and who's like, it's just

very interesting to me how decentralized it all is that there is no authority anymore

determining who gets to win and lose.

It's a very fickle, crowd driven, you know, distributed decision making and that I think

is new and interesting.

They were not even a gleam in the Internet's eye January 2022 as we roll into halftime

nine to six.

That's a great transition.

The things we're talking about have so little connection to like to the football game

but we got to stay on track.

It was a time January 2022, we're coming, we think we're coming out of the brain poisoning

of isolation but no, we're actually just building on it the next four years and there's

also a football game going on Bennett sets a Bennett takes the sack from Dallas Turner

to grind another drive to a field goal.

So yeah, it's at nine, nine, six to half bulldogs down Sir confidence level a halftime.

I mean, you mentioned how you don't get too high or too low going into the game.

No John Mechie for the Alabama Crimson tide and then coming out of halftime, Jamison

Williams is done as well.

You're down three but is your level of confidence rising that you stabilize after?

I'm feeling okay at halftime.

Like I said, as long as we're within shooting distance, as long as we're staying close, I'm

the kind of fan who still like I'm not going to panic, I'm going to feel okay as long as

we got a shot.

So feeling good at halftime, not good but feeling okay at halftime.

End zone finally breached 44 minutes into the game by the mirror white but Alabama strikes

back with 10 quick points, 18 to 13 lead.

Bryce Young is able to get out of the pocket and hit Cameron Latu.

Again, you mentioned the front seven, Alabama is going to rush for 30 yards on 28 attempts

this game.

So it's all on Bryce's shoulders.

He throws for like nearly 60 times from nearly 400 yards.

Alabama has a massive play advantage by the end of it and you're down with 10 minutes

left, 18, 13.

Is that worrying you how much Alabama is on the field relative to Georgia?

I hadn't thought about it that much.

In terms of the play count was not something that was in my head but I was, you know, it

was more just like we've got to make something happen.

The offense has got to make something happen.

We've been close.

We've had some bad breaks like one of again the thing that like really bugged me.

There was a call where Stetson Bennett had had a similar play to Bryce Young where the

ball kind of pops out of his hand and it's one of those things.

Is it a forward pass or is it a fumble?

And early in the game when it happened to Bryce Young they had called, oh well, that's just

a forward pass.

His hand is awkwardly kind of doing a thing and we're calling it a forward pass.

So your touchdown doesn't count, Georgia.

When it happened to Stetson Bennett they actually called it a fumble and I was real kind

of pissed off that like, well, why was it a fumble for us and not for them?

And I was like, is this going to decide the game?

Is this going to be it like we're going to get screwed by an extremely stupid marginal

call and that's going to be what swings the game?

But we had the ball.

We were down 10 minutes to go but we had the ball.

So I was just hoping that like something would have that we got to make something happen,

you know, arguably not a fumble puts Alabama in position to take that lead.

And I got to make something happen Stetson Bennett studies a bit delivers confidently

throws down the stretch, both the short ones and at a nine Mitchell 40 yards downfield

to retake the lead.

That was such a veteran play from Stetson Bennett by the way as well.

And again, I should shout out the defense because the only touchdown Alabama ran a lot

of plays.

They ran a lot of plays that game.

They had one touchdown on the day and it was when they got a short, they got a field

like they got the ball on the 10 yard line, an extremely short field.

That's the only touchdown they got the whole day other than that, the defense held

them to a bunch of field goals, which is what decided the game.

The only touchdown was on it, you know, a 10 yard drive.

So big shout out to the defense.

But the long touchdown that put the bulldogs ahead for good was like a 45 yard bomb and

it was a bomb.

It was just I'm chucking the ball into the end zone because Alabama had jumped off sides.

It was one of those like very, very subtle ones where, you know, sometimes they go say

hut and snap the ball and sometimes they go say, hut, hut.

And they do it like twice in cadence with the idea they try to get you to jump on the

first hut and then snap it half a second later so that if a guy jumps, you catch him

off sides.

And it worked this time that one one defensive lineman had kind of stunted forward and

ended up in the off sides position.

They snapped the ball immediately.

And Stetson Bennett is aware this has happened, he knows I got a free play.

They were off sides.

I got a free play.

I'm throwing it to all the way to the end zone.

If you watch the play, he doesn't go through any reads.

He takes the ball.

He knows that it's a free play because of the off sides and he just chucks the ball into

the end zone and we catch it for like a 45 yard touchdown and just just a really savvy

veteran play, you know, that is, you know, obviously a great catch, a great toss and catch.

But the setup for that I've always had, you know, really appreciated.

And yeah, it slides to the right dodging both the off ball blitz and the blitz pick up

by James Cook there.

It's the beautiful looking play.

James Cook strike you as someone who could be like fighting for league rushing titles

in the NFL every year.

It's funny.

James Cook didn't ever really stand out that much at UGA partially because like, we all

thought he was a good player.

But UGA has always under Kirby Smart used kind of a rotation system among running backs.

We don't ever have a running back that gets like 1500 yards.

We always have three or four running backs and we rotate them heavily because I think

his philosophy is about like not wearing down your back.

Like running backs are valuable and if you run them too much, they get beat up and hurt

and they're not as good.

So, you know, to some degree, I think this is great for the running backs themselves

because they enter the league fresher and then like with running backs, your body just

dies at some point.

At some point, you've taken too many hits and you're just like your, it happens very

quickly where you in the NFL, you might have 1300 yards one year and 300 yards the next

year and you're just done.

Your career is just over because you've got too many miles.

But I think at Georgia, we kind of, we keep them fresher.

That's, I think that's the philosophy anyway.

And so James Cook was not the starter.

He's a mere white was the starter.

We call them Zeus and then we also had Kendall Milton and Kenny McIntosh and some other

guys too.

Like James Cook was a good player, but I'm kind of, I'm a little surprised how well he's

done.

Like I didn't expect him to be like a leading the NFL kind of guy.

Yeah, if I'm a top running back prospect and much more appreciate getting the James Cook

workload than the Mark Ingram workload or about 10 years earlier at Alabama, yeah, I'm

actually looking at this right now like Zeus that year had 850 yards rushing.

And James Cook had about 730 and then Kenny McIntosh had another 300, Kendall Milton

had another 300, Dijon Edwards had had 200, Stetson Bennett had about 250.

So we had six players with more than 200 yards rushing.

If you include Stetson Bennett, that offensive line getting it done Warren McClendon would

go on to be is now a good starter for the Rams.

Broderick Jones went first round to the Steelers.

It's been a little more up and down, but still early on that offensive tackle learning curve

in the NFL that some guys take three year three year four to really hit and then be a good

long time starter in the league.

So yeah, Broderick Jones, Warren McClendon on that line.

And in the second half, they really start to establish a run and Alabama, you can tell

is we're getting really antsy to take that away.

And Georgia takes advantage there with a downfield throw to add an eye Mitchell.

Then on the following they get the ball back to go get some insurance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, Alabama, it really is King on the run and James Cook shows some of that kind of

electric ability to turn a loss into a third and very short.

And so Alabama is like, let's send the house again.

They got the screen on for Brock Bowers and you get to see him show that ability to catch

the ball turn up field untouched and suddenly you're up 20.

That was part of the, that was part of the challenge of that Georgia offense that

that year where everybody remembers the defense for good reason.

But part of the challenge of that offense was we had two or three incredible tight ends.

Bowers was the best tight end in the country.

And he was probably the fastest tight end in the country to immediately like he was running

a four four as a freshman or something crazy.

And we also had Darna Washington, the big O who's like six eight to 65 or two seven like

just in a mountain of a guy and he could go out and catch passes as well.

And we had, we had a couple of other young guys who ended up being really good, Oscar

Delp, Lawson Lucky, I think might have been there.

But so we had like we could roll out three tight end sets and you didn't know whether we were

going to be you know basically handing the ball off on a play where it's like we're effectively

rushing with like seven or eight offensive linemen on the field or maybe they'll all

go out for passes and you have to be able to guard Brock Bowers now.

And Darnell Washington with like linebackers or safeties and that's trying to like take

care of both of those possibilities was just really, really difficult when you played

that Georgia team and they would roll up with multiple tight ends and you didn't know

what was going to happen.

It was just it was very hard to you know take care of both of those at once Todd Monkin

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Using multiple tight ends, calls the screen at just the right time, Stetson does a good

job of getting that out and George Pickens downfield catch early on and on this drive draws

a big flag going downfield.

So many weapons to work with, see how the browns do and the off season to give Munkin

something to work with there.

2021, early 2022, go back into infinite scroll topics.

The ringer can compare any movie character down to the extra to an NBA player.

I feel like we can try to compare guys to top ranked chads or interesting Silicon Valley

investments.

This seemed like this period was peak, zuck pumping money into the metaverse.

How did Roblox stuff him in the locker and did the metaverse at the time, did it seem

destined to you?

Yeah, so this is something I've written about basically, but it's very funny to me that

Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company from Facebook to meta because he believed so strongly and

the idea that like the metaverse was the future, right?

And to him, the metaverse meant we're all going to be wearing VR headsets, the big, big

clunky sci-fi look and things with a screen, two inches in front of our eyes.

And we're all going to be exploring virtual worlds with these headsets on.

We're going to be buccati by brands, brands everywhere.

Yeah, and just, you know, for a while, this was an invogue idea and it never made much

sense to me.

Nobody actually wants to do that.

Nobody wants to listen to a podcast by strapping a four pound thing to your head.

And, you know, having it, having that visor, there's a few like niche applications like

video gaming, maybe there's some cool video games you can play with that, but nobody's

going to have, you know, corporate meetings, your zooms are not going to turn into like

metaverse things.

That's just not going to happen, you know, when you're scrolling Instagram, you don't

want to do that again, laying on the couch with like the big clunky, like virtual reality

thing on your face, like you just want to do it on your phone.

So it never made much sense to me.

And at some point, they've, they've pumped so much money into this.

I believe Mark Zuckerberg has lost something like 70 to 80 billion dollars trying to fund,

trying to make the metaverse a thing.

He renamed his whole company.

He lost 80 billion dollars.

And the whole thing just went nowhere.

It has gone absolutely no, but no one has adopted this technology, not from the meta vision

quest, which is what they call their thing.

Not with the Apple Vision Pro or whatever it's called, like nobody's, nobody's buying,

not the Oculus, like it's just gone nowhere.

But the idea of the metaverse in terms of a platform where you can do lots of different

things, virtually, that exists and it's called Roblox.

And this is something I've written about where if you're older, you may have no idea what

Roblox is.

It is by far the biggest video game in the world, by, by a lot, it's the biggest video game

in the world.

It is, there are more monthly users for Roblox than there are people who play PlayStation

and Xbox and Nintendo Switch put together.

Like it is an absolutely enormous thing.

And what Roblox is, is it's not really a single game as much as it is a platform for

kids to build their own games.

They build all sorts, they build collectible games, they build horror games, they build PVP

shooter games, they build puzzles and exploration games and just all kinds, they build social

hangout spaces where the point is just to hang out and talk with your friends.

And some of these games, like there's a game called Bloxfruits, which is bigger than

World of Warcraft, by itself.

There's a game called Steel of Brainrot.

There's a game called Steel of Brainrot, which I believe is bigger than League of Legends,

by itself.

Like it is unbelievable the scale of what Roblox does.

And I've written about this, I think it's very funny that Mark Zuckerberg spent 80 billion

dollars trying to make the metaverse happen when he could have just bought Roblox for

maybe a billion dollars back in the day.

Just run the playbook, buy Instagram and steady, he got innovation bogged by some random

ass company and if we can go back to January 10th, 2022, go on a weird journey.

Metta's failing and so are the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Thank you.

There's your transition.

Thank you.

The game reaches its climax here after Georgia pushes the lead to 2618, the Alabama Crimson

Tide.

Get the ball back with three minutes, Bryce Young, the high has been trophy winner.

Are you worried a little bit?

At this point, I'm honestly freaking out more than I was when we were down.

Yeah.

When we were, it's the first half and we're down by three points, I'm fine.

When it's, we're up by eight and they have the ball and they're driving.

I'm nervous, like I've never been nervous before, like it's, it's so close, like I can,

I can taste it and just the experience of being a Georgia fan is telling me that something

is going to go wrong.

So this Alabama, it's, something's going to happen, we're going to collapse again.

So I'm incredibly nervous, yeah.

And they do get into Georgia territory before Bryce Young goes down field, left sideline,

it's under thrown.

And he has an escort, does Keely Ringo.

Would you be reacting similarly to Kirby smarts?

Yeah.

His roller coaster.

Would it be similar roller coaster for what?

He wanted to see it.

Yeah, honestly, yeah.

I mean, so for those who don't know, you know, Alabama has the ball.

They have a chance to drive and get a tie and touchdown and a two point conversion.

And they, you know, Bryce Young just under throws a ball.

He's the, he's, he's, he's, he's a trophy winner, but that play, he just, it's just

on him.

He just under threw it.

And Georgia got an interception.

And Kirby smart is like right there.

It's that sideline.

He's feet away.

And he starts screaming, go down, go down like, like, you know, don't try to run it back.

Just fall down and we can end the game.

And instead, Keely Ringo runs it all the way back.

It's like 75 yards for a touchdown.

And Kirby smart is on the sideline, running beside him, screaming, like, go down, go

down.

And he sees, he looks up and he's like, oh, there's like an open field.

And he's like, okay, and he starts, he switches to like celebrating, like, okay.

But yeah, no, that moment, I think I, I don't think I will ever forget that moment.

It felt like my soul had like ascended, like, like I have seen the pearly gates, like

I have seen heaven and, and this like, it, it exists.

It's real.

I get to enter it.

I genuinely don't think I will forget that moment as long as, as long as I live and that,

you know, you can go online and like, look at it, somebody put together a compilation

of like Georgia fans reacting to Keely Ringo's interception.

And there's so like, these poor fans, this, you don't understand how battered and beat

down the fan base was at this point.

And how much of a catharsis, a release this was to finally be for like, in that moment,

we're free.

Like we've done it.

It's over.

Like we finally won.

And it was, it was pretty special, man.

Yeah, I had to wait since the 1980 season, New Year's Day, 81, when they sealed the undefeated

season against Notre Dame in the national tie, or the, it was a sugar bowl, not the national

title, back then, to be declared back then it was effectively the national title, because

again, there was no real national title, right?

But Georgia and Notre Dame were number one and number two.

So it was one of those years where it just worked out.

There was kind of like a de facto national title.

It didn't work out like that every year, but that year we knew is whoever won the sugar

bowl was going to be the champion.

And you want to know another fun fact from that game?

You can, if you go back and look at this, you can find this on YouTube, Herschel Walker

dislocated his shoulder and basically his first run of the game.

He, you can watch him.

He's, it's like a eight, 10 yard run or something like that.

And he's going out of bounds and he gets hit and you can, his shoulder is fully dislocated.

You can see, if you know what you're looking for, that he like comes off and he has to

get it popped back into place.

And then he would go on to rush for like 130 yards with, with a dislocated shoulder, basically.

You do that in the state of Georgia.

You can have whatever you want after you fake sheriff badge.

You want that?

Go for it.

Except for a synod seed.

Yeah.

Once again, you know, man, it's ran a full touchdown behind the national environment.

Yeah.

Fortunately for him.

Yeah.

And it is funny.

This was, um, this felt like a passing of the torch to both the 2021 championship and

the 22 when it came back to back that Stetson Bennett has kind of replaced Herschel Walker's

like the greatest player in the history of Georgia football.

Because his story, you can't really tell this story without talking about Stetson Bennett.

Like a guy who was a two star high school recruit walked on to Georgia, you know, was a

backup left to go play it like a, what do you call it, a juco?

Had a good juco year came back to Georgia got like got on scholarship as like the third,

but as the third string quarterback.

And he was just a guy who was never going to be anything, right?

He was just a walk on who earned a scholarship, but was going to be the third string.

And the beginning of 2021, JT Daniels got hurt.

And it was not even planned that when JT Daniels got hurt that that Bennett was going to be

the guy.

Carson Beck was going to be the guy.

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but Carson Beck was slated as the number two

quarterback.

And he just didn't play well enough.

In fact, there are some rumors, by the way, there are some rumors that after JT Daniels

got hurt, Carson Beck kind of was going around campus like, I'm the man now.

I'm the man.

Nobody, nobody better fuck with me like, I'm hot shit now.

And that the coaches didn't like it.

So they started Stetson Bennett instead.

And that like this is kind of unconfirmed, but that is a thing that that supposedly happened.

But we do know that like coming out of spring training, Carson Beck was number two on the

death chart and Bennett was three, but Bennett was the one who ended up starting.

And the rest is his, the former walk on, you know, through for 300 yards against Michigan,

through for 300 yards in the championship, I think against Alabama.

And was the MVP of both of those games and was the MVP of both playoff games in 2022.

And you can't tell the story of this game or of the whole Georgia football renaissance

without talking about him.

So it's just, it's a remarkable, remarkable story.

Like many of those Georgia players from the 2021 team in the NFL, back up for the Rams.

And he's there with Warren McClendon.

And we mentioned Broderick Jones and Darnell Washington with the Steelers.

And then the whole Bulldogs Eagles pipeline.

So you have this championship, you have all these players find NFL rosters.

Incredible success.

You win a second title, but the challenge many sports fans have after seeing their first

championship after being a fan for decades, can you reach that level of a endorphin rush

again that you got from that first title?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I just try to stay humble like I'm trying to remember as a Georgia fan that like

I'm in the good old times when people look back and they're like, Oh, I wish we were

in the good old times.

I'm in the good old times right now.

Georgia won the SEC championship the last two years.

We have not done well in the playoffs the last two years.

But that's like the, to me, the SEC championship still matters a lot.

That that still is an important thing to win.

We've won it two years in a row.

I think we've won three of the last four.

Like I am, I am super happy.

I love, I'm trying not to be spoiled.

Like it's, it's great to be a Georgia Bulldog fan right now.

So appreciate the good times while you're in them is my life advice for everyone out

there.

This has been another episode of remember that game.

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