MUNRO: Still basking in a championship a week later

I’ve relived the play several times through the actual game footage of that moment. But YouTubers have gotten creative in packaging that play, too, which I’ve enjoyed. One particularly dedicated fan synced up old radio play-by-play from the late, great Larry Munson with the footage of Ringo’s interception and run. It was a heartfelt way to bridge what was with what is.

One of the more humorous videos paired Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” with Ringo’s interception and score. It actually synced nicely and managed — in a laughable way — to capture some of the catharsis of the moment. Go figure. (If you remember, Sony Michel’s game-winning run in the 2018 Rose Bowl was given a similar treatment).

Ringo’s shining moment — this generation’s Belue-to-Scott — not only slammed the door on the four-decades-without-a-title punchlines, it padlocked it and welded it shut. Georgia’s detractors will have to write new material and have an off-season to figure it out.

Meanwhile, Georgia fans, over a week later, are still celebrating — as they should.

It’s been 41 years. Did you really expect the afterglow to burn off in nine days? No, there’s still plenty wick left on that candle.

The reaction to Georgia’s championship shows that not all championships are digested equally. Still riding those great vibes from the national title game in Indianapolis, an estimated 100,000 fans crammed into Athens on Saturday for a coronation of sorts for the newly-minted national champions. It was quite the scene. Throngs of red overtook Athens’ streets on a gray winter day with no game on the schedule for months. Yet it very much bared resemblance to a game day. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, himself, remarked that he’d never seen a full college stadium in January. In the conference where “It just means more,” to Georgia, this really meant more.

Because part of the DNA growing up a Georgia fan has been knowing that no matter how good your team was (I submit 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 into evidence) something was lurking out there to derail it all — as if there was some cosmic college football prankster waiting to strike when ‘Dawgs hearts were fullest. A ranking of the SEC’s most dramatic games usually includes several in which Georgia was the loser.

But no — no more.

And that’s what Saturday was about. The starved came to feast, and 41 years of history were pushed to the rear view when the 2021 championship banner was raised atop Sanford Stadium, the bright red pennant waving defiantly against the cloudy gray of the day.

For whatever reason, the fates of the Georgia football team mean so much to a lot of people despite vastly more important things transpiring in the world.

Good or bad, maybe football serves as a big distraction for all those things.

Maybe that’s why last Monday’s win felt so good, why ending a 41-year journey resonated so poignantly, why Ringo’s remove-all-doubt pick six represented a collective joy, why any win feels good.

I don’t know.

But I do think Georgia fans should savor it for as long as they can. I know I am.

Ben Munro is the editor of The Braselton News