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INDIANAPOLIS — The hero was all at once easy to spot and yet impossible to see. Like he’s always been.
The 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship had been over for a few minutes, the Georgia Bulldogs having finally vanquished archnemesis Alabama 33-18 in a contest that was much closer than that final score will ever explain. The air above the Lucas Oil Stadium turf was filled with cigar smoke and confetti. Georgia football players, coaches and family were frantically running around, gathered in pockets of people, hugging and sobbing and screaming in groups of two, three, five folks at most.
Then there was the horde that surrounded No. 13. The quarterback. Stetson Bennett IV, he of the country club name and the blue-collar work ethic. You couldn’t see him, but he was most definitely there, his 5-foot-11, 190-pound frame easily hidden by the TV cameras, boom mics and full-arm extension smartphone camera snappers.
“Bennett! Bennett! They need you up on the stage!” a Georgia athletic staffer with a couple of security guards in tow shouted as they worked to penetrate the ring of photographers, reporters and teammates who had formed a wall around the quarterback. The kid who passed on scholarships to smaller schools and chose to walk on at Georgia, only to leave for a junior college, return, lose the starting job and regain it due to an injury to the starter, all while dogged by Dawgs who didn’t believe he had the flash or talent to compete against more dynamic QBs like Bama’s newest Heisman winner, Bryce Young.
So, why stick with it? Because his only childhood dream was to do exactly what he did Monday night. The kid who went to games in Athens, Georgia, and ran around in his backyard with a football tucked under an arm that was draped in a UGA jersey, living out every fantasy of every kid in the world — winning it all for the team he was born adoring.
“Bennett! Bennett! We really gotta go!”
“Right now?” the curly headed 23-year-old shouted…
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Source : espn
