Credit Kirby Smart for bringing back the glory with Georgia’s long-awaited championship – The Athletic

INDIANAPOLIS — Kirby Smart stood on the sideline with 1:09 left, leaning on his knees, as if there were tightly wound springs in his limbs waiting to pop. He watched the play unfold — the desperation pass, the coverage by his players, the interception right in front of him. And then all the springs popped.

He leaped into the air. His arms flailed. As Keele Ringo picked off the pass and began his run to glory in the other direction, taking the ball and the past four decades of the program with him, Smart gave chase, as he tried to catch up with Ringo, screaming at him.

“The sad thing is I was screaming to get down,” Smart said.

Because even with victory now certain to everybody else in the Lucas Oil Stadium, Smart did what great coaches often do: fret until the end about what might go wrong.

But not this time. After coming close in 1981 and 1982, after a short-lived No. 1 ranking in 2008 and the drive that died at the Alabama 5-yard line in 2012 and second-and-26 in 2017 and too many other fizzles in key moments of key games, not this time.

Forty-one years after Belue to Scott and Herschel trucking Bill Bates and a Sugar sweet title, six years after Smart returned to his alma mater with the mission of bringing glory back to Georgia, the pain is over. No more, “Georgia can’t beat Alabama.” No more, “Kirby Smart can’t beat Nick Saban.” No more, “This team can’t win when it counts most.” No more debates, “But Stetson Bennett …”