BLACKSHEAR, Ga. — The conquering hero returned to his little hometown Sunday, and he still wasn’t sure what to make of all this — the proclamation read by the politician, the parade down Main Street, the giant gold key to the city (the first awarded in Blackshear).
“You come back to a town where you basically know everybody’s name, and you feel like you don’t really deserve all this attention,” Stetson Bennett said. “I mean, you just won a football game.”
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He knows now it was more than that. When Bennett, the unlikely choice on everybody’s Bingo card to start at quarterback for Georgia this season, not only won the job but also led the Bulldogs to their first national championship in 41 years — and was named offensive player of the game in each of the team’s two College Football Playoff games — Bennett cemented his legacy on many levels. He became one of the greatest stories in Athens and college football history, a forever icon in Georgia sports and a name that will be talked about for generations in Blackshear, this tiny dot in the southeast corner of the state.
“Biggest thing to ever happen here,” said Jacob Goble, a classmate of Bennett’s in middle school and at Pierce County High School who was working security at the parade.
Second biggest?
“I can’t think of anything,” Goble said.
Storefront windows and marquees morphed into relative love letters. On Average Joe’s Pawn and Fancee Fingers and the Huddle House. For those not sure what city they were entering as they traveled south on Ga-121, the first three visible signs are “Blackshear Stock Yards,” then, “Welcome to Blackshear. Founded 1859” and then Blackshear Elementary School, with a marquee that reads: “We Love the Mailman. Priority Mail to Indy Delivered. 13.”
Blackshear, Ga., in south Georgia is the hometown of Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett. (Jeff Schultz / The Athletic)Three women set up a kiosk to sell souvenir newspapers in the morning, more than two hours before the parade. With them was a skeleton wearing an Alabama jersey and hat and holding a sign that read, “The Mailman Dropped a Bomb on Me.” The skeleton’s nametag read, “Eddie.”
“My granddaughter named him,” Lisa Mendoza said.
“I think he should be called Bryce Young and the sign should say, ‘A Ringo ate my baby,” Nancy Colquett said. (Kelee Ringo set up the punchline.)
Sunday was Bennett’s first public appearance since the day following Georgia’s 33-18 win over Alabama in the College Football Playoff national championship game in Indianapolis three weeks ago. That’s assuming you don’t count him working the drive-thru at Raising Cane’s in Athens and the spot he did for Great Clips, just two among the blur of NIL opportunities that have come his way.
When he wins a Natty and serves Box Combos all in the same week… pic.twitter.com/j6snSwLSNE
— Raising Cane's (@raisingcanes) January 15, 2022
“He’s turned down more than some people make in a lifetime — well, at least most make in a year,” said his father, Stetson Bennett III. “He wants to think about everything he does. If somebody says, ‘You have to make the decision now,’ the answer’s probably going to be no.”
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There’s an expression: “When pigs fly.” It so aligns with the Bennett story that the Georgia quarterback has had it as his Twitter background for at least two years, after the circuitous route from walk-on to walk-off to junior college and back again and sudden star. He was told he wasn’t big enough, wasn’t good enough and, until the win over Alabama, shouldn’t have been starting over JT Daniels.
Bennett always believed he could achieve at the highest level. But the journey, the euphoric ride to the championship and the aftermath, has been dizzying.
“I was a starting quarterback in high school, so people knew my name and all that stuff,” he said. “Obviously, this is on a grander scale. But growing up and being raised the right way, you don’t let that faze you. It’s cool. But if it all stops tomorrow, who I am doesn’t rise and fall with my magazine (cover) pictures.”
He said the attention and sudden demands for his time get “a little old sometimes. But it comes with it. I’ve had a good support system. If somebody comes out of the woodwork now and acts like they’re my best friend, I tell them no. But I’m just trying to focus on my school. I have an assignment due tonight. It opens up doors, but you try to take it all with a grain of salt.”
There was at least a brief period when some wondered if he would return for another season in 2022. The Bulldogs had fulfilled a dream, won a championship, shut up the world of doubters, and Bennett had expressed plans to go to law school one day. But he acknowledged for the first time Sunday that he was never going to leave.
“I always had a general idea,” he said. “I think it’s the best job in the world. And I didn’t have an offseason last year to spend with the guys. This year I will. It’s exciting.”
It took so long to get to this point. Why would he leave now?
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“I don’t think there was ever a doubt,” Bennett’s father said. “He loves playing football, and where else would you want to play? You only get a certain amount of time to play college football. Honestly, I was surprised he announced anything. I thought he would just come back and play. All of the attention is not his style. He didn’t want this.”
He now punctuates the football family legacy. Buddy Bennett, his grandfather, went to Stetson University, left when the program dropped football and enrolled and played at South Carolina, allegedly hitchhiking there. During the Playoff, Stetson Bennett mused, “People make it such hoopla about my journey, (but) I didn’t freaking hitchhike anywhere.”
Bennett’s father played in high school and walked on at Georgia Southern for a spring under Erk Russell. He quickly realized he was going to have a difficult time cracking the lineup. So he enrolled in pharmacy school.
He knew his son’s road in Athens would be difficult but said: “You tell your kids, ‘You can do anything in this world.’ It’s just good when it works out sometimes. I remember the day we dropped him off, and I said: ‘Stet, there ain’t but five people in the world who think you can do this. The good news is me and you are two of them.'”
He said Georgia football administrator Mike Cavan phoned him “every week” to keep tabs when Bennett transferred to a junior college in Mississippi, but he never passed that information along to his son because “he needed to stay focused on football.”
As many highs as there were this season, Bennett’s father said it was difficult to see his son endure the doubts and criticism and cries from many fans and media members for Daniels to start against the backdrop of so much success. Daniels recently entered the transfer portal.
“Just the shock of where we are,” Bennett’s father said. “A kid does it right the whole way through, playing for the love of the game. I’m just surprised you can be attacked for doing it the right way.”
Blackshear, Ga., honored Stetson Bennett on Sunday with a parade after he led Georgia to a national championship. (Jeff Schultz / The Athletic)Bennett outplayed Michigan and Alabama quarterbacks in two Playoff wins, including Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young, completing 66 percent of his passes for five touchdowns and zero interceptions. He led the key go-ahead touchdown drive, a 40-yard strike to Adonai Mitchell, in the title game after Alabama had taken an 18-13 lead following a disputed fumble call by officials.
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When Ringo later sealed the game with a 79-yard pick-six, Bennett broke down in tears on the sideline and was hugged by his teammates and coaches.
The folks in Blackshear and Pierce County were always behind him. Kids and adults wore Bennett jerseys and held up signs along the parade route in this five-stoplight town. Members of the Savannah Quarterback Club made the 100-mile drive to present him with a black Stetson hat with the scores of Georgia’s 14 wins on it. School teachers filled a three-ring binder with handwritten letters to Bennett.
Pierce County held a Stetson Bennett Day before the championship game, which the honoree obviously could not attend. But the day after the game, he said, “912 — the best area code in Georgia by far.”
“When you come from a place like this, where everybody works hard, you learn that things aren’t given to you,” Bennett said Sunday. “You have to work for them. You have to be a little stubborn. When you know everybody and they know you, it gives extra incentive to do well because it makes those people proud.”
What lesson did he take from playing small-town high school football? He thought for a moment, then said, “I would rather have people who know what they’re doing and execute their job and play for each other than a more talented person.”
The small-town kid now owns a state. Maybe he has a point.
(Top photo: Jeff Schultz / The Athletic)
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