Jay Rome and Arthur Lynch suffered through the trauma of Georgia’s loss to Alabama in the 2012 SECCG. Their thoughts on that and how it connects to tomorrow night’s meeting verge on the poetic.
“There’s nothing bittersweet about it,” Lynch said. “I just want the people who were a part of that 2012 team and felt that pain to have a little bit of redemption. We may not have had a hand in this game, but we had a hand in shaping the history of UGA football. No matter if we win or lose this game on Monday, 2012 will always be seen as a year we didn’t quite, we gave it everything we had.”
Rome says he’s “super ecstatic” for this year’s players, who have a chance to finish what Rome and his teammates felt they should have five years ago.
“I can’t lie, I’ve thought about it a lot,” Rome said. “I felt like the football gods took one from us.”
In the end, perhaps it’s the only appropriate way it could finish. The Georgia Dome in Atlanta may be gone, but it’s the same opponent, minus one of its key coaches.
“It’s a perfect exorcism: This is the first year the Dome is not there, we go back for the first time since 2012, and now it’s the championship, and it takes a former Georgia Bulldog to be the head coach to kill this curse,” Lynch said. “It could be romanticized in southern football lore.”
Redemption’s been the theme common to Georgia’s last two wins — the team made amends in the SECCG for laying its only egg of the year and Sony Michel overcame the only biggest fumble of his career by scoring the winning touchdown in the Rose Bowl. Can the team draw on that three times in a row en route to winning its first national title in 37 years?
If so, Lynch really may be on to something there.