For the record, I’m jealous of all y’all who were in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl 2018

Watching the game unfold from home in Atlanta was an unbelievable experience. A rough, rocky, you name it first half was followed by nail-biting for two more quarters leading to a momentous, historic overtime culminating in a Georgia win.

It is indeed great to be a Georgia Bulldog!

I’ve been a Georgia fan for the better part of my life now. Having decided at 16 that I wanted to attend UGA’s Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication, I picked the right time to join the Bulldog Nation. It was 2002, the year of the “Davids” when David Greene and David Pollack won the SEC Championship.

Georgia won the SEC Championship again in 2005 when I was a junior at UGA and D.J. Shockley was the quarterback for the Dawgs. Georgia went on to the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta (after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans) and I got lucky enough to attend but, alas, Georgia got pummeled by West Virginia. I subsequently pissed off a bunch of Mountaineers and ended up on Deadspin.

And I think that’s the cool thing that unites everyone who is a college football fan: no matter how old you get, despite the years out of school, you still bleed your school’s colors and cheer as loud as possible.

With two of my favorite UGA alumni, Matt Foster & Katy Ruth Camp at Homecoming

Over the past decade, we had some fabulous times during the Coach Mark Richt era. There were big wins with Knowshon, A.J. Green, Todd Gurley, Aaron Murray, Matt Stafford, the list of greatness from our boys in the silver britches goes on. We had some big wins but tough losses and no SEC Championship which my husband’s Georgia Tech fraternity brothers loved to remind me every football season.

It has been 12 years since it felt this good to be a UGA fan

After a wild 2017, starting the year off with UGA going to play for the NCAA College Football National Championship feels absolutely spectacular. I wasn’t even born the last time Georgia won it all with Vince Dooley and Herschel Walker (who by the way are still on my shit list for endorsing The Trumpster Fire).

Making it this far, being recognized as one of the top two teams in the nation, is a feeling of excitement, honor, and years of passionate support paying off. This holiday season, it felt like Christmas came three different times.

• First on Dec. 2, 2017, when the Dawgs won the SEC Championship
• The second time on actual Christmas
• On Jan. 1, 2018, winning the Rose Bowl

Larry Munson has that famous line about “sugar falling from the sky”, and if Munson was still around today I like to think there would have been some lovely remarks about rose petals raining down on the Bulldog Nation. Kinda like that scene in Gladiator when Maximus has his great fight in the arena.

As our pal, Shane, wrote in his column about how Georgia’s “never been here before” I’d like to share my favorite passage that rings so true for every UGA alumni and fan.

“The entire country now knows about this team what Georgia fans hoped would prove true all year: that we belong here. That it was worth it. That pledging your heart to something as pointless and capricious as a football team can someday deliver an emotional payoff, even at the University of Georgia.”

So now we are praying and preparing for Georgia to face Alabama in the 2018 College Football National Championship. It’s master vs. apprentice with Kirby Smart taking on his old boss, Nick Saban. The last time Georgia played Alabama was in 2015 and literally the most depressing game I ever attended. It was a torrential downpour in Athens and the Crimson Tide rolled through Sanford Stadium winning 38-10. Coach Richt was let go from UGA that season, and in comes Kirby Smart who (as offensive coordinator at Bama) put that hurtin’ on the Bulldogs.

Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed a transformation at Georgia. There’s the Smart factor combined with the phenomenal talent of Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, fucking true freshman Jake Fromm, and all the guys on this year’s squad. This is the Georgia team we’ve hoped and prayed for. Regardless of what happens in the National Championship, we’ve made it farther in our lifetime than ever before.

Thank you to all everyone in the Bulldog Nation for this incredible journey. We’ll see what happens next week.

Let’s #GoDawgs!