Think back to your childhood, when dreams engulfed your mind. Your dream may have been to be a firefighter, an astronaut or a professional athlete. As a young child, those thoughts are merely dreams. Those dreams rarely become reality. Life has a funny way of sending you down different paths, even when you still end up happy and fulfilled.

The dreams, unfortunately, typically don’t tail along for the ride.

As a young boy, Stetson Bennett had one dream — to play quarterback at the University of Georgia. Bright eyed and a believer, that’s what he wanted more than anything as a young fan to two UGA alums. Forget the fact that as a high schooler he was like a lot of other kids before him—undersized, overlooked, undervalued. That didn’t matter. He knew what he wanted long ago and was determined to make it happen.

If it meant defying the odds, so be it. Bennett wanted more than anything to be Georgia’s starting quarterback.

All these years later, not only did he achieve this dream, but he became a legend in the process.

Bennett, the former walk-on who once dreamed of this moment but had to prove time and again that he was worthy of such a position, may go down as the greatest Bulldog to ever suit up. While his height prevented Power 5 schools from offering him a scholarship out of high school, Bennett concluded his Georgia career with two national championships, a perfect 2022 season, an SEC championship, four total College Football Playoff Offensive Player of the Game awards, a trip to the Heisman Trophy ceremony as a finalist, and the most passing yards in a single season in program history (4,127 in 2022).

Bennett could have gone to Middle Tennessee State on scholarship out of high school but chose to walk on Georgia, believing in his abilities. When he transferred after his freshman year, Bennett didn’t think he’d return to Georgia. Neither did head coach Kirby Smart.

The meeting that took place was actually when Smart began to think there was more to Bennett than he initially believed.

“I would point probably to the moment he and his mom came into my office and said he was leaving to go to junior college, and that he felt he was good enough to play and he wanted to go play,” Smart said. “And he knew there was no guarantee that he was going to play at our place the next season, but he knew he could play if he went to (Jones College). They sat in there with complete confidence. And I didn't doubt him. I just didn't know if it was at Georgia. And that conviction they had when they sat in my office should have said there's something special about this guy.”