How Georgia’s Stetson Bennett went from walk-on to College Football Playoff National Championship

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in October 2020. It has been updated.

BLACKSHEAR, Ga. — When Stetson Bennett III moved his family from suburban Atlanta to southeast Georgia in the summer of 2004, he took his eldest son and namesake to see the small town’s high school football stadium while they waited for moving trucks to arrive.

“Daddy, it’s a little small,” Stetson Bennett IV said.

“Yeah, but they’ll have to make it bigger when you get here,” his father told him.

Stetson Bennett IV was in the first grade.

While the stage might have seemed small in Brantley County back then, Bennett IV couldn’t ask for a bigger one on Monday night. Georgia’s unlikely starting quarterback will be looking to end more than 40 years of heartache when his No. 3 Bulldogs square off against No. 1 Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship presented by AT&T for the national title (Monday, 8 p.m., ESPN and ESPN App).

“Do I know that means a lot to a lot of people?” Bennett said Monday. “Yes. Am I trying to play some kind of savior by winning a national championship for millions of people? No. I don’t think that’s my job.”

Bennett’s circuitous route from lightly recruited high school prospect to preferred walk-on to junior college and then back to Georgia occurred because most college coaches believed he was too small to succeed at the FBS level.

Despite leading Pierce County High School to three consecutive state playoff appearances and throwing for 3,724 yards, running for 500 more and scoring 40 total touchdowns as a senior, his only FBS scholarship offer came from Middle Tennessee State. FCS programs such as Mercer, Samford, Harvard and Princeton wanted him, but FBS coaches thought he was too short and too light (he was 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds at the time).

“When you grow up in a little small town in Georgia, it’s hard to be seen,” his father said. “Even when you are, it’s easy to be discounted.”

Bennett III did…