Stetson Bennett on life as a title-winning QB: ‘Other than just the fanfare, nothing really else has changed’

ATHENS, Ga. – The past three months have taught Stetson Bennett IV more about being a celebrity than he imagined before he led Georgia to the national championship.

A Bulldogs starting quarterback is by definition a public figure in this football-hungry state. A Bulldogs starting quarterback who began as an undersized walk-on and worked his way to becoming an undersized first-teamer is by definition shoved under the microscope of every drive-time host, podcaster and sportswriter in the Peach State.

After Georgia defeated Alabama 33-18 in Indianapolis on the second Monday night in January, Bennett watched the accolades flow toward him with a raised eyebrow. Bennett knows everything that everyone said about him, even if he gave up a smartphone last season for a flip phone so that the catcalls wouldn’t hit him upside the head every time he opened his iPhone.

“I really don’t think he read any of that,” coach Kirby Smart said. “That’s impossible in this day and age. Impossible.”

As the Dawgs prepare for the G-Day spring game Saturday, Bennett has returned to the iPhone, one sign of his confidence. Another is the way he chuckles at the thought that leading Georgia to the national championship might have changed his life in a substantive way.

“My friends still give me crap,” Bennett said. “My little brothers and sister still think the same things about me. I’ve still got to do the schoolwork. Other than just the fanfare, nothing really else has changed.”

So, the fanfare. The other students, whose eyes tracked him as he went to class in January, don’t look at him anymore.

“After you win and people think you’re King Kong,” Bennett said, “since I didn’t get (the adulation) before, I didn’t really need it then or after the fact. It also comes from my mom and my dad just telling me growing up, and especially now, that the limelight is a little brighter and people are easily influenced by the bright lights. They just always remind me – football can do a lot of stuff for you. It can open up doors. But who you are as a person isn’t Stetson Bennett the football player. Who you are as a person is everything else.”

He attended the final round of the Masters on Sunday, and the decorum that is demanded at the Augusta National Golf Club served to his benefit.

“I get there, and people recognize me,” Bennett said. “But they are a lot less likely to come up because what they want out of that interaction is something to take with them. A picture provides that. When there’s no cameras, all you get to do is talk to somebody, say, ‘Hey,’ and actually be a person. People are a lot less likely to come up and say something.

“When they (did) come up, it was nicer, and less like, ‘Hey, take a picture with me.’ People get demanding. I’m like, ‘Hey, man, I’m not Ronald McDonald.’ Don’t talk to me like I owe you a picture. I’ll take one, to be nice.”

If that sounds uncommonly mature, that’s because Bennett is uncommonly mature. He will be a sixth-year senior, an accident of the pandemic, and he will be the starting quarterback for Georgia, which some Dawgs fans still consider an accident. J.T. Daniels is off to Morgantown, and Bennett, who will turn 25 the week of the Georgia-Florida game, still is at Georgia. It only feels as if he played for Mark Richt.

Bennett will be there for so long that, for the first time in his life, he will be a teammate of his brother Luke, who will be an invited walk-on slot receiver for the Dawgs this season.

“He’s got an unflappable demeanor,” Smart said. “He’s been doubted so many times. He’s used it so many times for motivation, like all the underdogs do. I was an underdog athlete. Not good enough, not tall enough, not fast enough. Overachiever. He’s played that role so many times, he’s unflappable when people doubt him. And he’s smart.”

Bennett bounced from majoring in philosophy to history and landed in economics; he plans to finish his degree this spring. He may play quarterback until no one asks him to play any longer. Bennett plans to attend law school, hopefully at Georgia.

Bennett is what college athletics used to be and still is on most every playing field besides football – something you do on the way to becoming who you are.

In the meantime, Bennett will continue to enjoy the perks of being the quarterback who led Georgia to the national championship. Next week, at the Vidalia Onion Festival, Bennett is catching a ride with the Blue Angels, the U.S Navy’s aerial showmen. They fly their F/A-18 Super Hornets at speeds as high as 700 mph, and they fly as close together as 18 inches apart.

Bennett called it the “coolest” thing that has happened to him, and in the same breath admitted he’s “kinda scared.”

“I have no idea how I’m going to react to it,” Bennett said. “I don’t know if I’m going to puke. I don’t know how you would know what your body would do. I hope I don’t pass out. Oh, that would be embarrassing.”

It just may be the price of celebrity. Stetson Bennett is at peace with paying it in full.