ATLANTA — “Come 4 o’clock tomorrow, you’re going to see a completely new side of me.”

That was what my Saturday Down South Podcast co-host Chris Marler, a lifelong Alabama fan, warned me ahead of the SEC Championship. Honestly, the warning probably wasn’t necessary. We’ve been hosting the podcast together for close to a year now, though I had never been to an Alabama game with him, much less an SEC Championship. I knew that even though Marler was an admitted part of the 85 percent of Alabama fans who didn’t graduate from the school, he bled Crimson in ways that few do.

Need an example?

How about the time when Marler made the executive decision to throw his tennis match so that he could watch Alabama play in the SEC Championship … when he was 8. Or what about the time that Marler sold his 1995 Buick Regal for $350 so that he could — as he put it — “go watch Tim Tebow cry” when Alabama knocked off No. 1 Florida in 2009.

I already had the history lesson to prepare me for what Saturday meant for Marler. The fact that a Playoff berth possibly hung in the balance was only going to amplify things. And by “things,” I mean stress, excitement, devastation, elation and basically every possible emotion that Marler experienced Saturday. It was a roller-coaster.

Being along for the ride was basically like I was hitting the Buffalo Wild Wings overtime button all day.

For starters, let me preface this all by saying that I had zero rooting interest in Saturday’s contest (that’s what a journalist is supposed to say, right?). This isn’t a brag or anything, but because I’ve been fortunate enough to write about college football for the past 6 seasons, I honestly can’t remember the last time I experienced a game sitting in the stands as opposed to the press box. And I can probably count the times on one hand that I went to a college football game as a fan without any rooting interest.

I picked a good time to do it. Now there’s a brag.

I mean, really. I literally wore a gray button down shirt to the game. The Georgia fans behind us were baffled by that. On multiple occasions, they asked me who I was pulling for. I kept telling them that I just wanted to get the full Marler Alabama game experience.

Well, I knew that wouldn’t include watching his usual “things aren’t going well at halftime” tradition of burning sage in his apartment (Marler’s fiancée actually did that before he could even fire off the “hey, would you mind?” text at halftime).

In our seats in the 300-level of the northeast section of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, we were surrounded by Georgia fans. Like, so much so that when Jalen Hurts came out of the phone booth with his cape on and saved the day for Alabama/Marler, you could hear all the individual cheers in our area. By that point, Marler had already plucked out the 2-3 Alabama fans who were a few rows back from us and across the aisle.

Obviously:

In case you couldn’t tell, he wasn’t kidding about the “a lot of bad words” part. Most of those were reserved for Alabama’s moments of disarray well before Hurts’ heroics. He certainly wasn’t alone.

With each Jake Fromm dime or D’Andre Swift cut, it felt like the Georgia section around us picked up steam while Marler had about as much juice left as that 1995 Buick Regal.

The confidence he came into Saturday with — as anyone would if they watched their team win every regular season game by at least 22 points — was gone after Swift scampered in for a score to give Alabama its first 2-possession deficit of the year.

“S—.”

Personally, that was my favorite video of the day.

At halftime, I asked for a different word to describe his mood, realizing that his team was trailing at the break for the first time all year.

“Tua.”

To that point, the sophomore quarterback’s performance was the story of the game. The Heisman Trophy frontrunner looked human for one of the first times all season, and even the biggest Alabama fan could admit that Fromm looked like the significantly better quarterback to that point.

Not once, but twice, Georgia intercepted passes that were basically on the goal line. Tagovailoa looked off from the moment he got his ankle twisted up after getting sacked by D’Andre Walker. Perhaps half joking, Marler elaborated on his 1-word answer.

“They need to put in Jalen, first off,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s one word, but the one word is ‘Tua.'”

Marler also went on to predict that Alabama would still come back and win. You know when @OldTakesExposed drops the fire emojis after a money prediction? Looking back, I think that probably qualifies.

But as I imagine everyone did Saturday, there was some big-time flip-flopping going on. By the start of the fourth quarter, it was still a 1-score game, and Marler had already nervously chugged roughly 6 bottles of water and taken 7-8 trips to the bathroom (he said after UGA made it 28-14 game that he needed to “take a walk,” which resulted in him not being back for Jaylen Waddle’s 51-yard touchdown catch).

So he hedged. Hard.

(The UGA fan in the background dropping the double dirty birds was in no mood for Marler’s takes):

And that was the freezing cold take of the day.

But really, I couldn’t blame him. I thought it was Georgia’s day. Even after Rodrigo Blankenship uncharacteristically missed a chip shot that would have given Georgia a 3-score lead, the feeling was still that the Dawgs were in prime position to pull off the upset. At least I felt that.

I remember turning to the UGA fans behind us and saying, “Y’all are fine. The difference this year is how much better Jake Fromm is. That’s gonna be the difference down the stretch.”

It wasn’t. Instead, the difference obviously ended up being Hurts.

You wouldn’t have known that from the quiet in the stadium after Tagovailoa went down. Whatever panic came over Marler quickly turned to outrage when he called out a UGA fan a few rows down for cheering while Tagovailoa was being tended to (even the friends around the cheering UGA fan were telling the guy to cut it out).

By the way, I forgot that was a thing. Like, that there’s always at least one idiot who always fails to read the room and decides that cheering is the appropriate course of action when a kid is lying on the turf surrounded by trainers.

That’s something I’ll give Marler credit for. As frustrated as he was when things weren’t going well for Alabama, he never got to the level of “I’m embarrassed to be sitting next to this guy.” That was admittedly a big step for him because once upon a time, “the full Marler Alabama game experience” consisted of losing friendships after the Kick-6.

In a strange turn of events, Marler actually made friends with the Georgia fans behind us by the start of the fourth quarter. They were trading swigs of Bulldog Bourbon that one of the UGA fans snuck into the stadium.

By game’s end, though, Marler’s buzz was a familiar one. For the second time in 2018, he was at Mercedes-Benz Stadium unable to wipe the smile off his face after Alabama pulled off an improbable postseason comeback with its backup quarterback to stun Georgia. This time, the cheers for Tagovailoa were replaced by “I LOVE YOU, JALEN.” When Fromm’s last-ditch Hail Mary hit the ground, Marler was practically giggling:

(Consider this a shameless plug to go listen to our SEC Championship reaction podcast that we recorded Saturday night. And while you’re at it, you might as well subscribe to the SDS Podcast.)

By the time we made our way down the Mercedes-Benz Stadium escalator behind a sea of mostly depressed Georgia fans — I granted Marler his wish of staying for the SEC Championship trophy presentation — we ran into plenty of other Alabama fans.

Some of them just wanted to give a basic “Roll Tide” while another wanted to chat us up about why he thinks Hurts will stay at Alabama instead of becoming a grad transfer at season’s end. I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy was ripping the Bulldog Bourbon a little too hard.

Marler, on the other hand, was sober. Had Alabama lost that game and Tagovailoa’s injury looked like a death sentence for the Crimson Tide, maybe that wouldn’t have been the case. In an Alabama season that’s been loaded with blowouts and G.O.A.T. discussions, I could tell that Saturday meant a little more for Marler and probably any Crimson Tide fans who witnessed Nick Saban’s latest feat of brilliance.

Maybe a loss would have provided the full Marler Alabama game experience. Or maybe like Hurts, Marler has developed over the years. He resisted the urge to fight the Georgia fan who clapped for Tagovailoa’s injury, and instead of making enemies by trolling the UGA fans behind us, they told Marler by night’s end that he was the “best Alabama fan they had ever met.”

I did indeed see a new side of the most diehard fan I know. And in case you couldn’t tell, it was a blast.