TIGER, Ga. — Georgia‘s former starting quarterback, Carson Beck, rolled through campus in a sleek Lamborghini, reportedly valued at more than $300,000. The head-turning sportscar was part of a name, image and likeness (NIL) deal with a high-end automotive group.

In stark contrast, the Bulldogs’ new starting quarterback, Gunner Stockton, cruises through town in a 1984 Ford F-150. With a four-speed transmission and odometer that clicked past 300,000 miles long ago, the two-tone truck lacks modern conveniences such as air conditioning, power locks and power windows.

For Stockton’s family and friends in the tiny mountain town of Tiger, Georgia (about 90 minutes north of Athens), the old pickup feels like an appropriate choice.

“I think that sums him up,” said Stockton’s uncle, Allyn Stockton. “He’s just kind of a plain-wrapper guy. He’s really a simple guy.”

On Dec. 7, college football fans were introduced to Stockton in the second half of Georgia’s 22-19 overtime victory against Texas in the SEC championship game. After Beck was injured on the final play of the first half, Stockton came off the bench to rally the Bulldogs from a 6-3 deficit.

With Beck undergoing season-ending surgery this week to repair the elbow on his throwing arm, the No. 2 Bulldogs’ hopes in the College Football Playoff now rest partly on Stockton’s right arm and legs.

The third-year sophomore is expected to make his first career start against No. 7 Notre Dame in a CFP quarterfinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (8:45 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN+).

Stockton’s family and friends say he has been preparing for this moment for much of his life.

“The people that watched him play in Rabun County aren’t surprised at all,” Allyn Stockton said. “They knew this was coming.”

IT WOULDN’T TAKE someone long to meet all of Tiger’s residents; its population was 422 in the most recent U.S. Census. The one-stoplight town has a still-operating drive-in theater. The roadside attraction Goats on the Roof on Highway 441 used to sell everything from Amish foods and furniture to homemade fudge and ice cream. And, yes, visitors could feed goats that maintain the lawn on the roof.

The Stockton family settled in Rabun County in 1956 and opened a car dealership; Stockton’s dad, Rob, still works there. Gunner was named after his paternal great-grandfather, V.D. Stockton, who was shot down twice while serving as an aerial gunner aboard B-17s during World War II and was known to his friends as “Gunner.”

Both of Rob’s parents attended Georgia and his late father, Lawrence, also graduated from the university’s pharmacy school. Lawrence was an avid Bulldogs football fan and took his sons to many home games and a few on the road over the years.

Rob and Allyn weren’t with their father when Georgia knocked off No. 8 Auburn 20-16 on the road on Nov. 16, 1985. The aftermath of that upset win became one of the most bizarre moments in the history of the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” because Auburn police used water cannons on Georgia fans who had rushed the field. The police also eventually turned the hoses on Bulldogs fans in the stands.

Jack Walton, the Auburn University police chief at the time, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he didn’t second-guess what his officers did. “My only regret is that we didn’t get every one of them,” he said.

Lawrence Stockton was among 38 people who were arrested that night. He told the AJC that he never went onto the field. According to Lawrence, he was handcuffed and taken to a holding area for asking a police officer why they were spraying the stands. He spent four hours in jail until his wife bailed him out.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have gone down and asked why they were spraying in the stands,” Lawrence Stockton told the AJC. “But you can only watch and take so much before you become a concerned citizen.”

Three days later, Allyn Stockton was sitting in homeroom at Rabun County High when a friend showed him the newspaper article. He didn’t know his dad had been arrested.

“Dad’s rendition of it was probably different from reality,” said Allyn Stockton, an attorney in Rabun County. “His thing was, ‘Hey, it’s one thing to turn the hoses on the people on the field. They turned them up on the people in the stands. There were elderly people up there and they couldn’t get out of the way.'”

V.D. Stockton had been the area’s district attorney for more than a decade, and his son’s charge of disturbing the peace was soon dropped.

Many years later, a stepbrother sent Allyn Stockton another article that included a photo history of the 1986 Auburn-Georgia game, which is still remembered as the “Game Between the Hoses.” He spotted his dad on the field in one of the photos.

“I mean, he’s on the field,” Allyn Stockton said. “One guy’s got a billy stick and there’s about three or four [cops] on him. My understanding was Dad wasn’t on the field, but he’s clearly getting the hell beat out of him on the field.”

On Oct. 30, 2010, Lawrence Stockton died after watching Georgia lose to Florida 34-31 in overtime in Jacksonville, Florida. He walked back to a tailgating area outside the stadium with friends and collapsed from a heart attack. He was 63.

ALLYN AND ROB shared their father’s love of football. Rob was an All-American safety at Georgia Southern and is a member of the school’s athletics hall of fame. Gunner’s mother, Sherrie, a counselor at Rabun County High, was among the all-time scoring leaders in basketball at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina. Gunner’s sister, Georgia, played basketball at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina.

But Gunner is the best athlete in the family. When Gunner was about 6 years old, Rob asked Rabun County High assistant coach George Bobo if he’d start working with his son. Bobo had been a longtime high school football coach in Thomasville, Georgia. His son, Mike, is currently Georgia’s offensive coordinator.

George Bobo moved to the north Georgia mountains at the urging of then-Rabun County High coach Sonny Smart, who is Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart’s father.

When George Bobo saw Gunner throw a football the first time, he said, “Holy crap, you need to make him a quarterback.”

Stockton was the quarterback on teams that went 65-0 in the North Georgia Youth Football League. He didn’t lose a game until the seventh grade at Rabun County Middle School. The next season, he played quarterback for the high school JV team as an eighth grader.

Stockton was a four-year starter at Rabun County High. As a senior in 2021, he completed 71.3% of his pass attempts for 4,134 yards with 55 touchdowns and one interception. He also ran for 956 yards with 15 scores. In four seasons, Stockton accumulated 13,652 passing yards with 177 touchdowns and 4,372 rushing yards with 77 scores.

Stockton broke Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence‘s state record for career touchdown passes and Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson‘s state mark for career total yardage.

Stockton ran for seven more touchdowns than current Detroit Lions tailback Jahmyr Gibbs, who had 70 at Dalton High School from 2017 to 2019.

When Stockton wasn’t playing sports, he tended to cattle, hunted deer and bears, and fished for trout in mountain streams. He fished and water skied at nearby Lake Rabun, where former Alabama coach Nick Saban and other coaches had vacation homes. Just before Stockton turned 16, he asked his parents for cows to put on his grandmother’s farm. They gave him four cows and a bull for Christmas.

“The old farm had terrible fencing,” Rob Stockton said. “Everybody in the county helped him and knew that they were his when they got out of the fence. We would get 911 calls and they’d say, ‘Your cows are out, put them up.’ Or people would stop and just put them up.”

Stockton once went gator hunting with a nuisance trapper in Florida, along with his uncle Allyn, Bulldogs safety Dan Jackson and former tight end Cade Brock. He told his family he wanted to beat the Gators in Jacksonville because that’s where his grandfather died.

BEFORE HIS JUNIOR season of high school, Stockton committed to play at South Carolina, where Mike Bobo was working as offensive coordinator. After Bobo left for Auburn, Stockton flipped to Georgia. By the time he enrolled, Bobo was working as an analyst for the Bulldogs.

Stockton redshirted at Georgia in 2022, then attempted 19 passes in four games last season. He had taken the field in only three games before he was thrust into action against the Longhorns.

“He has never stood on the sidelines in his entire life,” Rob Stockton said. “His goal this year was to be the greatest backup and greatest supporter of Carson Beck that he could possibly be.”

Stockton’s time finally came against Texas in the second half of the SEC championship. He led the Bulldogs on a 75-yard touchdown drive on his first possession, then threw a bad interception that helped the Longhorns tie the score at 16 on Bert Auburn‘s 37-yard field goal with 18 seconds left in regulation.

With the Bulldogs trailing 19-16 in overtime, Stockton lowered his shoulder pads at the end of a run at the Texas 4. He was met by Longhorns safety Andrew Mukuba, whose jarring tackle sent Stockton’s helmet flying.

Stockton held on to the ball for a first down, and Trevor Etienne ran into the end zone on the next play to give the Bulldogs a victory.

“It was brutal to watch,” Rob Stockton said. “Watching the replay of it on the scoreboard was worse than watching it live. But seeing him pop back up, it didn’t bother me much.”

Sherrie Stockton hasn’t watched a replay of the hit and “doesn’t intend to.”

The Bulldogs will have had more than three weeks to get Stockton ready to play the Fighting Irish. Regardless of what happens at the Sugar Bowl, his parents don’t expect him to stray far from his roots.

Stockton will still make the 74-mile drive from Athens back to Tiger in the same 40-year-old truck his grandfather once owned. He might even need a few neighbors to push it off when it doesn’t crank.

DETROIT — Tucker Gleason ran for one overtime score and threw for four more as Toledo beat Pittsburgh 48-46 in a bowl-record six overtimes at the GameAbove Sports Bowl at Ford Field on Thursday.

The game surpassed the previous mark set 48 hours earlier when South Florida beat San Jose State 41-39 in five overtimes in the Hawai’i Bowl on Tuesday.

This is the third bowl game to go to multiple overtimes this season, already the most in a single bowl season since OT was established in 1996. Northern Illinois beat Fresno State 28-20 in double overtime in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl on Monday. There had never been a bowl game to go to four overtimes before this week.

This also is the first season with multiple games to go to at least six overtimes, after Georgia beat Georgia Tech 44-42 in eight overtimes last month. Toledo’s last multi-OT game was a win in double overtime against Iowa State in September 2015.

Pitt freshman Julian Dugger, making his college debut, ran for two overtime scores and threw for two more, but his incomplete pass in the sixth overtime ended the game. The Panthers, who started the season 7-0, became just the second team in FBS history to end a season on a losing streak of six or more games, including a bowl game.

After Gleason and Dugger traded rushing touchdowns in the first overtime, each team got a field goal in the second. Each threw two-point passes in the third overtime, and Gleason got another in the fourth to make it 44-42.

Dugger was sacked, apparently ending the game, but the Rockets were called for holding. Dugger was ruled short on a sneak attempt, sending Toledo rushing onto the field for a second time, but replay ruled he crossed the plane.

In the fifth overtime, Dugger made it 46-44 with a scoring pass to Gavin Bartholomew, but Gleason tied it with his fifth scoring pass of the game. The sixth put Toledo back in front, and Dugger was pressured into a bad throw to end the game.

The Panthers played without starting quarterback Eli Holstein (leg) and backup Nate Yarnell (transfer portal). David Lynch, a redshirt freshman walk-on, started his first game but was pulled in the third quarter after throwing two interceptions.

Dugger led the Panthers to two touchdowns and a field goal on his first three drives, turning a 20-12 deficit into a 30-20 lead.

However, Toledo got its second pick-six of the game when Darius Alexander returned Dugger’s interception 58 yards for a touchdown. The extra point made it 30-27 with 7:49 left, and the Rockets kicked a tying field goal with 1:45 to play.

Toledo started quickly, driving for a Gleason touchdown pass on the game’s opening drive, but Kyle Louis blocked the extra point and returned it for Pitt’s first defensive two-point conversion since 1990.

Desmond Reid‘s 3-yard run and Ben Sauls‘ 57-yard field goal gave Pittsburgh a 12-6 lead, but Gleason’s 67-yard touchdown pass to Junior Vandeross III put the Rockets up 13-12 midway through the second quarter.

On the next play from scrimmage, Braden Awls picked off Lynch’s pass and returned it 42 yards for a touchdown and a 20-12 halftime lead.

ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

ARCADIA, Calif. — Raging Torrent won the $200,000 Malibu Stakes by 1 1/4 lengths on Thursday at Santa Anita, with Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan finishing last in the final Grade 1 stakes of the year in the United States.

Ridden by Frankie Dettori, Raging Torrent ran seven furlongs in 1:21.54 and paid $7.20 to win as the 5-2 favorite in the field of six on opening day of Santa Anita’s 90th winter meet.

“We really thought going into it we were the best horse,” winning trainer Doug O’Neill said. “Just watching him day in, day out, he was training out of this world.”

Mystik Dan, a nose winner of the 150th Kentucky Derby in the closest three-horse finish since 1947, was last. The 3-year-old colt raced for the first time since finishing eighth in the Belmont Stakes in June.

Stronghold , seventh in the Kentucky Derby, was second. A trio of Bob Baffert trainees were third, fourth and fifth: Imagination, Pilot Commander and Winterfell.

There was a stewards’ inquiry involving the stretch run between Imagination and Pilot Commander. The stewards ruled that Imagination did lug out and make contact with Pilot Commander, but it didn’t affect the order of finish and no changes were made.

Dettori celebrated with his trademark flying dismount in a crowded winner’s circle.

“Of course, I was afraid of Mystik Dan, but I thought the day to beat him was today,” Dettori said. “At seven-eighths, my horse was very sharp and he proved it.”

Mystik Dan was sprinting for the first time in over a year. He was the first current Kentucky Derby winner to race at Santa Anita since California Chrome in 2015. After his narrow Derby win, Mystik Dan finished second in the Preakness.

“He broke good, but it just seemed like we were always chasing,” jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. said. “I think shortening up took away from him. After running a mile and a quarter, it is tough to go back to seven-eighths. The horse is fine.”

Other races – Johannes, the 1-5 favorite, rallied down the stretch to win the $200,000 San Gabriel Stakes by three-quarters of a length. Ridden by Umberto Rispoli, the 4-year-old colt ran 1 1/8 miles on turf in 1:46.50 and paid $2.60 to win for trainer Tim Yakteen.

– 16-1 shot J B Strikes Back won the newly renamed $200,000 Laffit Pincay Jr. Stakes by 1 1/4 lengths. Ridden by Antonio Fresu, the 3-year-old gelding ran 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.80 and paid $34.80 to win. Trained by Doug O’Neill, J B Strikes Back is owned by Purple Rein Racing, the stable of Janie Buss. Her late father, Jerry Buss, owned the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, which are now controlled by her sister, Jeanie Buss. O’Neill’s other horse, 3-2 favorite Katonah, finished sixth.