Once a 28-point blowout, Saturday’s Georgia-Alabama game in Tuscaloosa proved to be an instant classic as the Bulldogs and Crimson Tide rallied to a dramatic conclusion in front of Donald Trump and 100,000 or so other spectators.
In the end, it was Kalen DeBoer & Co. who held on, 41-34, but not until after relinquishing a lead that once seemed insurmountable.
Georgia quarterback Carson Beck briefly looked like the game’s hero when he connected with Dillon Bell on a 67-yard fourth-quarter touchdown to give the Bulldogs a narrow lead late in the fourth.
But 17-year-old Alabama receiver Ryan Williams caught a 75-yard touchdown pass from Jalen Milroe on the ensuing drive. The dynamic Williams turned back to grab the ball in tight coverage, did a quick pivot and sprinted down the right sideline. Milroe subsequently hit Germie Bernard for the two-point conversion for the Tide (4-0, 1-0).
On Georgia’s final drive, Alabama’s other freshman sporting a No. 2 jersey, defensive back Zabien Brown, intercepted a Beck pass in the end zone to secure the victory.
The long TD pass came one play and 13 seconds after Beck’s 67-yard bomb to Dillon Bell gave the Bulldogs (3-1, 1-1) their first lead of the game.
It was DeBoer’s introduction to a captivating rivalry of SEC powers that added another memorable chapter, even without Nick Saban prowling one sideline.
A rematch of last season’s SEC Championship Game, also won by Alabama, turned into a scintillating quarterback duel.
Milroe completed 27 of 33 passes for 374 yards with two touchdowns and an interception that bounced off the receiver. He also ran for 117 yards and a pair of TDs. Williams had six catches for 177 yards.
Beck was 27 of 50 passing for 439 yards with three touchdowns. He also threw three interceptions in the first multi-interception game of his career but put on a show in the second half.
The Bulldogs scored three touchdowns over the final 9:46. Alabama got the only one it needed.
Milroe led Alabama to touchdowns on its first four drives against a defense that stood as the only one in FBS not to allow one coming into the game.
The Bulldogs were down 28-0 a few minutes into the second quarter, their streaks of 42 consecutive regular-season victories and 28 straight regular-season SEC wins seemingly all but over by halftime.
Trump was far from the only celebrity in his private suite.
The Republican presidential candidate was joined by Kid Rock, ex-Auburn coach and current US Senator Tommy Tuberville, Bulldogs legend Herschel Walker, and country music superstar Hank Williams Jr.
Rounding out the star-studded suite was UFC star Colby Covington, junior Alabama senator Katie Britt, and famed golfer John Daly, all of whom are major Trump supporters.
Trump also spent time mingling with the crowd of roughly 100,000 fans. He got some popcorn at the Bryant-Denny Stadium concessions stand, pumped his fist at admirers, and was even seen on the stadium’s scoreboard.
Unfortunately for the massive crowd, Trump’s presence necessitated enhanced security, leading to egregiously long lines for fans.
‘Trump causing Alabama to become a swing state with this security,’ one Tide fan wrote on X alongside a photo of hundreds Alabamans waiting to enter Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Awaiting Trump in Tuscaloosa were countless stickers refencing his controversial comments about Haitian immigrants.
‘They’re eating the Dawgs,’ read the tag line, which gave a nod to Georgia’s football team.
Fans broke out in random chants of ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’ throughout the day, a preview of the rousing welcome he received early in the second quarter as he sat in a 40-yard-line suite hosted by a wealthy member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Trump’s brand of populist nationalism leans heavily on his dark rendering of America as a failing nation abused by elites and overrun by immigrants. But his supporters, especially white cultural conservatives, hear in that rhetoric an optimistic patriotism encapsulated by the slogan on his movement’s ubiquitous red hats: ‘Make America Great Again.’
That was the assessment by Shane Walsh, a 52-year-old businessman from Austin, Texas. Walsh and his family decorated their tent on the university quadrangle with a Trump 2024 flag and professionally made sign depicting the newly popular message forecasting the Alabama football team ‘eating the Dawgs.’
For Walsh, the sign was not about immigration or the particulars of Trump’s showmanship, exaggerations and falsehoods.
‘I don’t necessarily like him as a person,’ Walsh said. ‘But I think Washington is broken, and it’s both parties’ faults – and Trump is the kind of guy who will stand up. He’s a lot of things, but weak isn’t one of them. He’s an optimistic guy – he just makes you believe that if he’s in charge, we’re going to be all right.’
The idea for the sign, he said, grew out of a meme he showed his wife. ‘I thought it was funny,’ he said.
Katie Yates, a 47-year-old from Hoover, Alabama, had the same experience with her life-sized cutout of the former president. She was stopped repeatedly on her way to her family’s usual tent. Trump’s likeness was set to join Elvis, ‘who is always an Alabama fan at our tailgate,’ Yates said.
‘I’m such a Trump fan,’ she said, adding that she could not understand how every American was not.
Yates offered nothing disparaging about Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, instead simply lamenting that she could not stay for the game and see Trump be recognized by the stadium public address system and shown pumping his fist on large video screens in the four corners of Bryant-Denny Stadium.
That moment came with 12:24 left in the second quarter, shortly after Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe ran up the right sideline, on Trump’s side of the field, to give the Crimson Tide an eye-popping 28-0 lead over the Vegas-favored Bulldogs.
Trump did not react to Milroe’s scamper, perhaps recognizing that Georgia, not reliably Republican Alabama, is a key battleground in his contest against Harris. But when ‘the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump’ was introduced to the capacity crowd of more than 100,000 fans – all but a few thousand wearing crimson – Trump smiled broadly and pumped his fist, like he had done on stage in July after the bullet of a would-be assassin grazed his ear and bloodied his face.
The crowd roared its approval, raising cell phone cameras and their crimson-and-white pompoms toward Trump’s suite, where he stood behind the ballistic glass that has become a feature after two assassination attempts. A smattering of boos and a few extended middle fingers broke Trumpian decorum, but they yielded to more chants of: ‘USA! USA! USA!’
Indeed, not everyone on campus was thrilled.
‘There is, I think, a silent majority among the students that are not with Trump,’ argued Braden Vick, president of Alabama’s College Democrats chapter. Vick pointed to recent elections when Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden in 2020, vastly outperformed their statewide totals in precincts around the campus.
‘We have this great atmosphere for a top-five game between these two teams, with playoff and championship implications,’ Vick said, ‘and it’s just a shame that Donald Trump has to try to ruin it with his selfishness.’
Trump came as the guest of Alabama businessman Ric Mayers Jr., a member of Mar-a-Lago. Mayers said in an interview before the game that he invited Trump so that he could enjoy a warm welcome. And, as Mayers noted, Trump is a longtime sports fan. He tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and helped launch a competing league instead. And he attended several college games as president, including an Alabama-Georgia national championship game.
Mayers also invited Alabama Sens. Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville. Britt, a former student government president at Alabama, delivered the GOP response to Biden’s last State of the Union address, drawing rebukes after using a disproven story of human trafficking to echo Trump’s warnings about migrants. Tuberville, a former head football coach at Auburn University, Alabama’s archrival, is a staunch Trump supporter.
Joining the politicians in the suite were musicians Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. Herschel Walker, a Georgia football icon and failed Senate nominee in 2022, traveled in Trump’s motorcade to the game.
Fencing surrounded parts of the stadium, with scores of metal detectors and tents forming a security perimeter beyond the usual footprint. Sisters of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority showed their security wristbands before being allowed to their sorority house directly adjacent to the stadium. Bomb-sniffing dogs stopped catering trucks carrying food. Hundreds of TSA agents spread out to do a potentially unpopular job: imposing airport-level screening for each ticket-holder.
But what seemed to matter most was a friendly home crowd’s opportunity to cheer for Trump the same way they cheered the Crimson Tide, unburdened by anything he said in Wisconsin or anywhere else as he makes an increasingly dark closing argument.
‘College football fans can get emotional and kooky about their team,’ Shane Walsh said. ‘And so can Trump supporters.’
They didn’t even mind that Trump’s tie was not crimson. It was Georgia red.
