Watching the Super Bowl as a Former Eagles Fan, Current UGA Fan Was Like Being in a Time Machine
A flood of emotions hit me, but I wasn't sure exactly what I was feeling. Today, I tell the story of how this once die-hard Eagles fan stopped watching the NFL completely.
I think a big part of it has to do with the Georgia background on defense, you know. And I think that starts with Nakobe Dean and all those guys that were able to play ball in college together and bring their ways to the league.
And so I think that has a big impact on our culture on defense, how they play together, who they are, and then I think it kind of seeps through the team in many ways.
- Jalen Hurts, quarterback
Confession: I haven’t watched a full NFL game in years. Maybe it’s not that surprising to the readers given that I write a college football newsletter, but once upon a time (as my parents reminded me at the end of last night’s game) I would have been euphoric as the green and white confetti reigned down on Super Bowl LIX.
Let’s go back in time for a moment. In 2017, I was still in university. I was taking what my school referred to at the time as an ‘overloaded’ schedule which included six classes, five of them being in the Math, Stats and Econ departments, and one elective. It was a hectic schedule, so much so that it forced me to do something I hadn’t done since I started watching the NFL 10 years prior: miss a Philadelphia Eagles game.
Since 2007, when I first started becoming aware of professional sports, the NFL, and TSN (the equivalent of ESPN here in Canada), I watched the Eagles play every time they had a game.
I fell in love with the Andy Reid, Donovan McNabb, and Brian Dawkins era of the Eagles team. It immediately became clear to me that they were going to be my team. In fact, many of the T-shirts I still wear to this day are Eagles-themed attire, such as the very shirt I’m wearing as I write this article.
I fell even more in love with the team when the Michael Vick, Desean Jackson and Lesean McCoy era kicked off later in the 2010s. The first year when Vick became the starter, in particular, was a special season. I was in high school at the time, and it was fun every week to chat with friends about the games that happened on Sunday. Everybody had their favourite teams and we all knew who liked who, so when the Eagles won, it was if I won. In that sense, my fandom became crystallized, because it became personal.
Naturally, it was a tough pill to swallow falling to Aaron Rogers and the Packers in the playoffs, but most of the key pieces were returning for the Eagles next year so all was not lost. Plus, they brought in several high priced free agents that offseason to bolster the roster—creating a so-called “Dream Team”. It was sick.
Until, it wasn’t. That team, somehow, regressed. Like a hodge podge of puzzle pieces belonging to different sets pieced together by tape—it simply never quite fit right. Very disappointing.
At that time the NFL was amidst the throes of a different dynasty. The New England Patriots had dominated the sport since the early 2000s, and it was seen as an upset anytime another organization managed to win the Super Bowl. They were like the Alabama Crimson Tide of the NFL—they’d win it seemingly every other year. The legendary duo of head coach Bill Bellicheck and QB Tom Brady simply could not stop winning.
So it goes without saying that it took a special roster to overcome that organization. Seattle nearly managed to do it with an incredible defence in 2014. The New York Giants miraculously did it twice, with Eli Manning being their QB no less.
Baltimore and Pittsburgh took turns using brute force on defence to slay the dragon in the AFC championship. But by and large, New England were considered the premier organization of the sport.
Coming back to that 2017 season, my mental health was in crisis mode due to fatigue of my course load. It was a difficult semester, but one bright spot that kept me motivated was the success of my team, the Philadelphia Eagles. The organization, led by GM Howie Rosen, were still recovering from the disaster that was the Chip Kelly era.
That mad bastard traded seemingly all of the key players, completely overhauled the offensive system, and ended up with even worse results than Andy had at the end of his tenure. It was fucking disgusting to watch.
So when QB Carson Wentz came in and—basically overnight—changed the trajectory of the organization, it was very exciting. Even more so because it became apparent early on in 2017 that the construction of the roster was such that the Eagles had better players than most other teams at virtually every position group, in particular the offensive and defensive lines.
When Carson—then the frontrunner for the MVP award—went down vs. the Rams, I remember feeling nauseous in my stomach. I imagine I wasn’t alone amongst Eagles fans. This was the miracle season. Finally, our year. Taken away unceremoniously in a blink of an eye. “It really is torture being an Eagles fan, isn’t it?” I thought to myself.
In an eerily similar parallel to what transpired with my future favourite CFB program, the unheralded backup QB stepped in, and somehow actually played… better? Nobody really understood how Nick Foles could step in and pick up right where the NFL’s MVP frontrunner left off, but he did, and he appropriately earned the moniker of ‘Big Dick Nick’.
By that time, I had already started following CFB more than I had before. I had watched the Clemson vs. Alabama series in the national championship—and still maintain to this day that Deshaun Watson’s performance vs. that Tide defence in 2017 was one of the best sports watching moments of my life. I was also, from a distance, following the rise of the UGA program under coach Smart.
Despite the fact that I’ve listed a bunch of offensive players above, and write a newsletter primarily aimed at College Fantasy Football, I’ve always preferred defensive football. Defensive players were always more intriguing to me precisely because they didn’t get the same publicity or ‘hype’ as the offensive side.
Offensive players are for casuals, I would tell myself… “Real football heads love games that end 9-6” (like that LSU vs. Alabama natty). So naturally, when I learned about Coach Smart, his philosophy, and what he was building at Georgia, there was a very natural fit. Georgia, like my Philadelphia Eagles, seemed to place a premium on defensive football.
Though, I can’t say my CFB/UGA fandom started then, because I have memories of playing with the Dawgs more than any other team on the old NCAA video game on my PSP (playstation portable) back in the late 2000s. Who knows why we like the things we like—why we love who we love? It’s all predetermined, I suppose.
What changed everything for me was the discovery of high school recruiting. It was a world so different, and so foreign to anything that I had known as a professional sports fan, that I became a fat kid at a candy store immediately upon discovery of it. I wanted to consume everything.
I gorged myself on information. I learned about the recruiting services. What they did, how they did it, what all these numbers and things meant. Shortly after that I moved on to absorbing the narratives of that year’s recruiting class, the recruiting story lines, where do players come from, which areas do schools recruit, are there areas in states that are friendly to certain programs and not others etc. etc.
I particularly enjoyed the shade that coaches would throw at each other, like Ed Orgeron when asked about why LSU keeps struggling in Amite, Louisiana, after losing heralded DT recruit Ismael Sopsher to Alabama. Mind you, this was one cycle after losing four star WR Devonta Smith to Tuscaloosa from that area.
I love his answer. This was in the pre-NIL era of CFB where everything was hush-hush. Everyone knew bags were being distributed, but no-one would snitch on each other. Instead, you’d get passive aggressive sound bites like Orgeron’s:
Obviously there’s some players at other schools that help recruit these guys… whatever makes them go over there… you know, I don’t wanna discuss that. I just know this—we did recruiting the right way, as good as we can do it.
To me, this dynamic is one of the strengths of CFB. It is an ‘X’ factor that you just don’t have in professional sports. It’s fucking sick. Recruiting provides so much depth and colour to the sport that it captured me immediately and has not let me go since.
When 2018 rolled around, I was licking my wounds from a difficult four months that was the previous fall semester. Of course, I found some time to watch Kirby (who was in his second year of being a head coach) take on the KC Chiefs of CFB, Nick Saban and his Alabama Crimson Tide, in the national championship.
I’m sure the readers know where I’m going next… yes, that Tide team was staffed by one Jalen Hurts at QB (at least, to start the game), and a relatively unknown freshman from Amite, LA, Devonta Smith. I wasn’t yet a fully fledged committed Dawg fan, so when Smith caught that OT touchdown, it didn’t quite sting like it would probably would have a few years later. It was still disappointing because I—like I assume any others—wanted to see a new national champion.
It was tough start to a new semester, but that 2018 winter became one of the fondest memories of my life. I made changes to my process as a student and dominated my course load that semester. It turned out to be my greatest academic achievement of my scholastic career, which became a pivotal piece in landing an acceptance to the top grad school program in my country for my subject. The acceptance to said school then set the rest of my life in motion.
And of course, my team—which I didn’t realize at the time was not going to be my team much longer—somehow, someway, dethroned the mighty Patriots dynasty with a backup QB. I still remember the victorious battle cry I let out of the bowels of my soul when Brandon Graham forced the fumble out of Tom Brady’s hands. My parents were in another room, and came running in as if something had gone terrible wrong.
Victorious at last. It felt good. I was immediately flooded with text messages from friends who knew of my allegiance to the Eagles, congratulating me on a Super Bowl victory. It wasn’t just that Philly had won, it was if I had won.
In fact, because my Birthday is on February 6th, it usually falls on Super Bowl weekend; but when I saw friends on campus later that week—before I received any Happy Birthdays—I received congratulations for the Super Bowl victory. It was a good feeling.
However, when the high wore off, and the semester finally came to a close, I felt the unyielding force of CFB pulling me further and further away from my NFL fandom.
Kirby’s 2018-19 Recruiting Classes: My Transition to CFB Full Time
I subsequently acquired a subscription to an online recruiting service, and started following UGA recruiting.
I loved every bit of it. All of it was novel to me. The verbiage, the customs, the ebb and flows of various recruitments. It felt like for the first time I got to start reading the stories of these players at the very beginning, rather than opening the page towards the very end of the book (as I had as an NFL fan discovering players for the first time via the NFL draft).
Being close to the ground floor—the grass roots of football, as it were—was everything for me. When I learned about Kirby Smart and what he was doing at Georgia, a Tony Soprano quote sprung to mind “it's good to be in something from the ground floor”.
Indeed, it felt like if this program was a stock, it was time to buy as much as possible ASAP because national championships were coming very soon. Though, I should say that it wasn’t the fact that Georgia were going to be winners that was intriguing, but rather that it felt like I got to come in at the beginning of a great journey where I could see the future unfold before most other people could.
That’s how CFB used to be, by the way. In the pre-NIL/transfer portal madness era of this sport, following high school recruiting allowed you to see into the future. When a program started recruiting at a higher level than usual, winning was going to come two to three years later. Yes, that’s right, most of the freshman would NOT play immediately and they would stay and blossom in their junior and senior years.
Kirby’s first class (2017) was a top five class and better than anything UGA had done recently, but it wasn’t anything truly special. It was the 2018 class, specifically the national signing day in 2018, that convinced me that this program simply would not stop until they dethroned Alabama and won a national title.
Just as I had achieved the peak of my academic career that semester, Kirby Smart and his staff achieved their peak within the recruiting context. Players like North Carolina three star OL/DL Jordan Davis, or JuCo DT Devonta Wyatt were an afterthought in this class.
It was the big-time local five star LBs Adam Anderson, Quay Walker and Brenton Cox, star QB Justin Fields, the “best high school RB recruiting analysts had ever seen” in Zamir White, South Florida wonder kids Tyson Campbell and James Cook, and of course Jamaree “Death Row” Salyer that stole the headlines.
Here’s the Athletic’s Andy Staples covering the significance of the shift that was taking place on the trail during this historic time period:
We covered this slightly in Dear Andy a few weeks ago with regard to the 2020 class, but the 2018-20 classes were where Smart and company closed the talent gap (and may have created one in the other direction).
Alabama (and everyone else) wanted offensive lineman Jamaree Salyer. He chose Georgia with a commitment announcement that parodied Suge Knight’s “Come to Death Row” speech and grew into a captain of Georgia’s 2021 national title team.
Fort Lauderdale cornerback Tyson Campbell was the type of player Alabama could go into South Florida and pluck fairly easily, but he chose Georgia and developed into the No. 33 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
The excitement was palpable. How could this class not win every game UGA plays from now on? I was hooked. And this time, as the 2019 class kicked off, I had the chance to follow the ebbs and flows of their recruitments starting from their junior years.
But then I realized… what about the 2020 class? Then I could truly start following a class at the same time most of the recruiting industry started. And by that time, many of the 2020s were already included in rankings databases. One notable player that was ranked in the lowly 200s of 247’s internal ranking at the time was TE Jalen Carter.
Carter was being covered by UGA recruiting analysts because the staff had visited his high school in Apopka, FL and worked him out. Carter, whose head coach mentioned that a staff member from a college (I assume UGA’s) apparently told him that Carter would be a top-10 pick in the NFL draft one day, had played most of his career at TE but converted to defensive line that year.
I didn’t really understand it all at the time. As a newbie, I just looked at the ranking 247 created and assumed that that random point-in-time number they gave Carter was the be-all-end-all governing force of his football career. “Why is Kirby interested in this kid? How is a TE rated in the 200s going to be a top 10 pick?” I thought.
I decided it was all a bit too advanced for me and solemnly made my way back to tracking the 2019 class primarily. That was a fun one to follow. I have—burned in my memory—an interview of Mississippi LB Nakobe Dean and Texas Safety Lewis Cine vowing that their goal in college was to “destroy Alabama”.
I was new to being a Dawg fan but even then it brought me some level of satisfaction. I felt the anxiety other Dawgs fans felt when Savannah’s #1 player in the nation, OLB Nolan Smith took a late visit to Alabama. Kirby and his staff held off the Tide’s advances not once, but twice in acquiring the signature of eventual #1 overall draft pick Travon Walker from Middle Georgia, an area that would prove pivotal in Kirby Smart’s ascendance to the top of CFB.
Around this time I discovered a well-known YouTube channel named ‘Top Billin’, whose primary cover at the time was college football, with a specific focus on the state of Georgia. Like a prophet, he said that Travon Walker had #1 pick potential in the NFL draft back in 2019(!). A sentiment that I, of course, parroted as if it were my own many times over to any who would listen.
Nakobe Dean’s recruitment was probably my first taste of what a big-boy SEC recruitment battle entailed. He played high school ball at the border of Mississippi and Tennessee. He was effectively located in a ‘no-man’s land’ in terms of recruiting rights, so there was no telling which school had the upper hand in landing him. Alabama, the Mississippi schools, LSU, Tennessee, and seemingly everyone else in the south wanted him badly.
And of course, there was the George Pickens recruitment. A monstrous flip by current UGA WR coach James Coley, switching Pickens’ signature from Auburn to UGA at the hypothetical stroke of midnight on national signing day.
I learned then that recruiting wins were just as—and maybe even more—significant than actual wins on the field for many CFB fans. Because securing Pickens’ signature meant many wins in the future (some of them over Auburn). Ditto with Dean, Nolan Smith and Travon Walker. To beat Alabama, you have to beat them right at the beginning of the story.
There was an unforgiving and almost scientific precision to predicting CFB outcomes: if you don’t win in recruiting, you won’t win at the highest level on the field. There are no cinderella stories. Nobody gets their ass kicked in the first chapter (recruiting) and then comes back and beats their foe at the end (on the field).
Philly Bulldogs Win First Title
Fast forward to 2021. I’ve graduated from the University of Toronto, where I met my eventual wife. I am now employed as an economist at Canada’s central bank, which is a dream job of sorts for many Canadian Econ grads.
I am taking the train back from Ottawa where I spent the holiday season to Toronto. Unfortunately, just as I’m leaving for the train, I begin to get a headache. I realize shortly thereafter that I did not bring any medication with me, and thus, will have to suffer a five hour journey on the train with this ailment.
I don’t know about any of you, but I find that when I don’t treat a headache quickly, it tends to last for a very long time even after I take pain killers. The day was Jan. 10, 2022, which I remember like it was yesterday. I had chosen this day to return home specifically because I knew I had to watch the championship game between Alabama and Georgia alone.
This was the day that we had all been waiting for since 2018. From the day that I started following high school recruiting—following the story lines of all these high school kids turned-super humans on the field under Kirby; this was the roster that had to win it all, or it was never going to happen. If this team can’t beat Alabama, then nobody ever will at Georgia.
I got home and immediately took Tylenol. In fact, I think I took two. As I suspected, it did little to dull the splitting ache I had. I played Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” and sent it via messenger to some close friends.
I sat on my couch, one hand over one eye, and watched the game through the other eye like a Pirate with an eye patch. Not only did I want the Dawgs to win as a fan, I had placed a bet on them to win the natty shortly after they get their asses kicked in the SEC championship game, upping the stakes a bit because why the hell not.
How do you beat a dynasty with the best QB in the sport? Evidently, Philadelphia and Georgia came to the same conclusion (with the many of the same players, no less). The first half was brutal in every sense of the word. Massive bodies that moved faster than everyone else colliding all over the field.
It was one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen in my life. There will never be more talent on the same field together than in that game. It was the unyielding product of two monolithic football programs that had put everything into talent acquisition and development for multiple years.
It was, in my opinion, the peak of all peaks of the sport. I don’t think we’re ever going to witness rosters like that in CFB ever again.
Current Eagles Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith, Nakobe Dean, Kelee Ringo, Lewis Cine… these guys, among others, played lights out that night. Especially Lewis Cine. Kirby asked him to do a lot of things in that game and he fucking crushed it.
It was a display of all of Kirby’s wins of the last four years—wins that many of us fans had been tracking from the very beginning—spread all over the field making plays.
Like some sort of divine intervention, my head ache finally subsided as the fourth quarter began, right as the Dawgs started to establish their physical dominance over CFB’s boogey man.
Salyer was pushing more weight around than Dolph Lundgren in an 80s workout montage, blowing 330+ pound defensive linemen off the ball with ease as Zamir ‘Zeus’ White accumulated first downs like clockwork. James Cook broke out a huge run on a counter play that ignited the team. George Pickens gutted out a speedy return from a knee injury to catch a huge pass downfield.
Stetson Bennett, who started the year as a backup and was an unheralded player, to say the least, showed up every time he was needed most. Indeed, it had a very 2017/18 Eagles-esque quality to it.
So naturally, when the Eagles showed up and dominated Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs last night, it felt very nostalgic for this viewer. After all, it was a lot of the same players from that 2021 Georgia team. In fact, it almost felt like I was watching a Bulldogs game as I sat down to view the Super Bowl.
It was a very strange feeling. I think it might have been some kind of muscle memory; seeing the Eagles jerseys on the tv evoked some emotion—almost a feeling of obligation—like I should be invested here. And after all, the players in said jerseys were many of my favourites, many of whom I first met not as UGA players but high school recruits.
I didn’t receive any congratulatory text messages this time around as the green and white confetti reigned down. Yet, somewhere in my gut I felt a sense of pride and happiness. Happiness for those players, happiness for Howie—who’s the best GM in football in my opinion. Happy for Philly fans, whom I used to count myself amongst. Happy for fellow Dawg fans, who got to relive the glory days of that 2021 team.
Most notably, watching the Super Bowl reminded me to be grateful that I was fortunate enough to experience college football in the twilight of its golden era. A time before NIL, transfer portal craziness, and conference realignment began to erode the foundations of what I believe makes the sport great.
Maybe one day the sport will get back to that era. Or maybe, I’m just an old-head CFB fan now complaining about the way things used to be. Everything in life comes full circle, after all. ◾
Go Eagles! Go Dawgs!
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