Yes, Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett IV actually uses a flip phone. This has been reported to death.
He made the decision to technologically regress over the summer. Ahead of a fall semester packed with schoolwork and football, Bennett decided he no longer wanted a smartphone and all the distractions that came with it.
"I still have a laptop and a tablet for e-mail and anything important like that I can use," Bennett said. "And I will just use my cell phone for texting and calls. One pain in the butt is I have to carry a notepad to write down stuff because I used my notes app a lot back in the day a lot."
Bennett and his flip phone are now on the verge of leading Georgia to its first national championship in 41 years. While his friends in the phone industry played a small role, so too did Bennett's family and his unshakeable inner confidence in himself.
There has been talk all season about Bennett's improbable journey from Georgia to junior college and back again. But he's not the first member of his family to have a nomadic football career.
Bennett's grandfather Buddy started his playing days at, funny enough, Stetson University in the 1950s. When that school shut down its football program, Buddy Bennett hitchhiked to Columbia, South Carolina, where he then earned a spot on the Gamecocks' roster.
"People make it such a hoopla about my journey," Bennett said. "I didn't freaking hitchhike anywhere. That's just what you want to do if you want to play football. And it's as simple as that."
That example has stuck with Bennett over his now five years as a college football player. Sometimes, in order to accomplish your dreams of playing college football, you have to overcome some adversity along the way.
That includes twice starting Georgia's season as the backup, only to end up earning the starting job anyway. Even during the times he's played well, Bennett has continued to hear criticism of his play.
"There's a lot of things that go unsaid from that frustration. I'm not really allowed to say it," Bennett said. "But that's what, it's the nature of the beast. You're the hero or the zero. I'm glad it was me instead of anybody else, because I can handle it; because I can just shut it off and tell people to go blah, blah."
Bennett's teammates hear that criticism as well. Senior defensive lineman Jordan Davis sure did, following Bennett's SEC Championship performance when he threw a pair of interceptions.
"He never gets too high. Never gets too low. And we just need that even-keeled Stetson," Davis said. "I definitely think there was definitely a lot of trash talk about him after the SEC game that we all seen. We just want to make sure he had our support. And no matter what, we always are tenfold behind him."
Confidence is not something Bennett needs to worry about. Even when the outside world hasn't, he has maintained all year long that he has believed in himself and blocked out the noise. His parents, Stetson III and Denise, and his younger siblings have supported him each step of his journey.
As senior offensive lineman Jamaree Salyer put it, "Stetson is just going to be Stetson." That means a quiet guy that enters the locker room blaring country music, but it also represents a player that has faith in his abilities on the football field.
"I'm not as confident in everything I do as I am in football. So I'd say it comes from work," Bennett said. "It's not an ignorant confidence, like I believe I can do anything. But I believe I can play football really well, and that's from the work that I've spent over these past however many years I've been playing football."
Bennett is well aware of the task now at hand. He grew up in South Georgia listening to Larry Munson highlights. He knows the program hasn't won a title in over four decades.
Bennett's fan switch flipped off once he became a player. But at his core, he's still his same old self. He maintains that genuineness at all times, according to his teammates.
That's the reason he'll leave his flip phone behind and lead the Bulldogs out onto the field in Indianapolis Monday night with a chance to break the hex.
"He's going to be Stetson," Salyer said. "I think that everybody kind of draws to that just because we know that all times we're going to get Stetson, not somebody else."
