Wellllllllll.
Well,
what?
Well,
Dawggone!
We
waited for 37 years for another national college-football championship, but
Alabama did what great teams do. The
Crimson Tide found our weak spot and passed a pigskin right through our Red and
Black hearts—in overtime, no less.
My
friend Dorsey Hill, who was dubbed by the late Lewis Grizzard as “Georgia’s
greatest Bulldog fan,” texted me Tuesday morning: “Not ready to talk about it yet.”
But we both agreed that it’s been a magical season for Coach Kirby Smart
and the University of Georgia team.
That’s why few, if any, could find a soft spot in his or her pillow
after the midnight heartbreaker in Atlanta’s ritzy Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Well,
I certainly couldn’t. My brain kept
spinning. I darted from one what-if
scenario to the other. I had to stop
myself from mumbling about muffed calls by the officials. Stuff happens, but
what if Georgia hadn’t been wrongly flagged for offsides on that blocked punt?
I
finally put that out of my mind, but sleep was impossible. I alternated staring at the shadows on the
ceiling and to watching the red numerals on the bedside clock advance from 2
a.m. until I finally hit the shower at 6.
Do
you ever have a “glue song” get stuck in your head, so that the lyrics keep
rolling over and over? The Four Seasons have nothing to do with football,
particularly their falsetto voices.
Nonetheless, Frankie Valli kept serenading me nonstop with this one
line: “So close, so close and yet so far”
(away.)
The 1974 love song “My Eyes
Adored You” is never played at pep rallies or on pre-game locker rooms, but
that “so close, so close” analogy haunted me through the sleepless night.
Now,
12 hours after the grim reality of the 26-23 loss, I thought about another
analogy. If you miss your flight at the
airport, you can fuss and cuss all you want.
But no matter how big a hissy fit you pitch, that pilot ain’t coming back
for you. You are left behind to catch
the next flight.
Welllllll, that explains how our
Bulldogs missed the confetti celebration.
In the clash of the SEC and
national football titans, somebody had to lose.
As bitter as that reality tastes, we must swallow and go on.
Look
how far we’ve come in the past two years.
The Bulldog bite is back. There
are only 234 days until our Dawgs sink their teeth into the 2018 season.
Sic
’em!
Woof, woof!
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
