For the 3rd time in 7 years, Bama broke Georgia’s heart in Atlanta

In a Hollywood movie, you have to care only about the protagonist. The antagonist is either a faceless obstacle or a deserving foil. They got what was coming to them.

There are moments when real sports match, or even exceed, the Hollywood equivalent. Jalen Hurts’ off-the-bench performance in Alabama’s 35-28 win over Georgia in the SEC Championship was one of them.

This story was layered.

First, you had the comeback itself: Bama trailed 28-14 late in the third quarter; Georgia’s win probability (found here) was at one point 94.6 percent.

Then, you had Hurts’ own redemption. The junior was benched at halftime of last year’s national title game (against the same team in the same stadium, no less) and watched his backup, Tua Tagovailoa, win the title, then take his job in 2018 and engineer a 12-0 start and potential Heisman campaign.

But Tagovailoa’s knee buckled early in the fourth quarter on Saturday, and Hurts — who somehow didn’t transfer, who was somehow available to come in and try to save the day — came in, completed six of eight passes, connected with Jerry Jeudy for a gorgeous game-tying score, and then bolted in from 15 yards out for the game-winning touchdown with a minute left.

In these non-Hollywood stories, we have every reason to care about the vanquished. Their pain is every bit a part of the tale.

The Dawgs have now been the Crimson Tide’s tragic foil three times in the last seven postseasons — in the 2012 SEC Championship, in 2017’s national title game, and now.

All three were in Atlanta. All three required double-digit Bama comebacks. All three might have been the best games of their respective seasons. All three included particularly painful twists at the end.

Blankenship, for instance, missed a 30-yard field goal midway through the third quarter — a kick much easier than last year’s 51-yarder — that would have put the Dawgs up three scores and perhaps brought out a little too much Tide desperation.

And Lord, there was the fumble. Bama’s Josh Jacobs lost the ball on his way into the end zone in the second quarter and just barely managed to recover it in the end zone before it was batted away again and recovered by Georgia. These two unlikely results were worth 10 points by themselves.

A few years ago, after watching my own team suffer just about the most gut-wrenching loss imaginable, I wrote about how sports fans’ only common bond is pain.

Watching your team lose a heartbreaker doesn’t make you special. It makes you one of us. [...]

We show off our scars to each other as a form of brotherhood. Pain unites us. Pain is all that is guaranteed when we become fans. Hell, even Alabama fans can regale you with stories of pain, and they’ve collectively suffered less than any fanbase. We’ve all been there. And if you don’t feel enough pain after a loss, that might be a sign that your team is losing too much.

It’s hard to feel too bad for the Dawgs and their fans. They are, after all, a regular contender. Clearly their pain is not a once-in-a-lifetime, this-was-our-shot story — they’ve now had three title shots in seven years, after all. Kirby Smart is building his own star destroyer in Athens, and they’ll have a few more opportunities for catharsis and perhaps pain in the coming years.

For now, they have most certainly retained their spot in the Pain Club. Until their own redemption comes, we’ll even let them run the meetings.