I’ll admit it: I was fired up heading into last night’s national championship game between Georgia and TCU.
I was already riding TCU +12.5, enjoying some Chick-fil-A and a Yuengling Hershey porter (which I highly recommend, by the way), and locked in for kickoff.
And then ESPN dropped this banger on us:
John Williams, the legendary composer responsible for world-famous soundtracks from movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, put together an original composition, “Of Grit and Glory,” for ESPN to use throughout the game.
This had me ready to run through all the walls. Only now looking back do I know that it’s an absolute shame they wasted it on this game.
Not long after Williams’s piece premiered, Stetson Bennett and Georgia were well on their way to winning a second consecutive national championship. The 65-7 final score is the most lopsided result in any postseason college football game.
That’s right. Any bowl game. Ever. TCU might have been the dumbest bet in the history of dumb bets. Georgia blew through the spread with 8:30 left in the second quarter like a bullet train over a mouse.
Or a frog, if you think that’s a more applicable simile in this situation.
Bennett accounted for six total touchdowns en route to one of the most impressive individual performances we have ever seen in a title game. He was easily the best player on the field, capping a Hollywood-worthy career by leading the Dawgs to nearly 600 yards of total offense.
Meanwhile, TCU had 188 yards on offense and only forced one Georgia punt the entire game. Ouch.
Heisman runner-up Max Duggan was under pressure on nearly every play and looked pretty identical to that poor clichéd deer in a Ford truck’s headlights, hopeless and clueless as to what hit him. I am pretty sure that was actually Dax Muggan playing quarterback last night.
Even worse, future first-round pick Quentin Johnston was held to one three-yard catch. Dillon Bell, a Georgia true freshman who had only played in four games prior, had more receiving yards.
It’s a disaster of an ending for an otherwise unbelievable Cinderella story. After finishing last season 5-7, hiring a new coach, and starting the season unranked, TCU became the first program from the state of Texas to make the playoff.
Only, in this version of Cinderella, the princess makes it through everything and is about to marry Prince Charming, only for Lady Tremaine to make a shank out of one of Cinderella’s high heels and stab her with it on the altar. Imagine John Williams scoring the music for that scene.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the next great dynasty in college football has begun. With Nick Saban watching from the ESPN set, Georgia officially took the mantle from Alabama last night. Even Saban himself knew it.
Kirby Smart’s team figures to be the favorite to win again next season, with the majority of its starters likely returning next year, AND it has a strong group of transfers/young players coming in to fill any holes.
Regardless, besides the onset of a Georgia dynasty, the only other takeaway I have from the game is this: John Williams composes really cool music. It’s too bad that “Of Grit and Glory” became the theme song for brutal, cold-blooded murder, a la “The Rains of Castamere” in Game of Thrones.
The Bulldogs send their regards.
Follow Nick Hedges on Twitter @nicktrimshedges or Instagram @nicktrimshedges