ATHENS, Ga. — George Bobo liked working with young kids. He knew and liked Rob Stockton. Still, it was an unusual request.
“George, can you come work with my son? In the morning before school starts?”
“Your son? You mean your 6-year-old son?”
“Yes.”
“At 6:30 in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Well, OK. Sure.”
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The Stocktons had named him Gunner after a great-grandfather, V.D. Stockton, who served on a plane in World War II and was referred to in a newspaper story as “Gunner Stockton.” Rob and his wife, Sherri, liked the ring of it, per DawgNation. They named their first child, a daughter, Georgia. They named their next child Gunner.
The Stocktons had lived for generations in Rabun County, in the hills of northeast Georgia, close to the state lines of South and North Carolina. Their home is in a town named Tiger, population of 316 people per the most recent census. The elevation is nearly 2,000 feet, so the fog rolls in regularly.
Bobo had moved there as a favor to a friend. Sonny Smart had taken over the Rabun County football team and asked Bobo to be an assistant. Their sons, Kirby and Mike, were already friends and had played together at Georgia. Now George Bobo did another favor for a friend, Rob Stockton, agreeing to coach 6-year-old Gunner.
He was different from any child Bobo had ever seen.
“After I watched him the first time, I said, ‘Good gracious alive, he’s got a great arm, he’s an athlete. And 6 years old,’” Bobo said. “When a 6-year-old gets up at the field house at 6:30 in the morning and wanting to throw, you know there’s something going on there.”
This is a classic Georgia football story. The program is one of the most powerful in the country, hauling in elite recruits. But the quarterback situation, apparently, never can be easy. When Kirby Smart reached his first national championship game, it was with Jake Fromm, a freshman thrown into the fire because of an injury. When Georgia won two straight national championships, it was with Stetson Bennett, a former walk-on.
Now it could be Stockton, a Georgia boy just like Fromm and Bennett, and in his way reminiscent of each of them. (And George Bobo worked with all three.)
As a personality, there are major Fromm vibes. The relentless positivity. The aw-shucks public comments. The popularity with teammates. It was all part of what helped Fromm, suddenly in the lineup after an injury to Jacob Eason, which led to Fromm’s making his first college start against Notre Dame.
As a player, there are Bennett vibes. But they don’t ring quite as close. Bennett was faster. Stockton is a few inches taller and has a stronger arm, per Bobo.
That’s where first impressions can be hazardous: Most of the sports world saw Stockton for the first time a few weeks ago when he was inserted at halftime of the SEC Championship Game in place of the injured Carson Beck. Though Stockton made a few throws, it looked like his coaches didn’t trust him to throw downfield and instead relied more on his scrambling.
That’s not an accurate reflection, per Bobo, who recalls a middle-schooler Stockton being able to hit receivers 65 yards downfield.
“No, he can throw it,” Bobo said.
Bobo and 6-year-old Stockton worked together four times per week from late January until March. They picked it up the next year, and it continued every year until the eighth grade. Along the way, the families grew close: Stockton went fishing with Bobo’s grandchildren, including Drew. Stockton didn’t get to know Mike Bobo until high school, by which time he was making quite an impression.
In the Stocktons’ basement for a time there was a framed photo of Mike Bobo, in his Georgia jersey, No. 14, signed by Bobo with the message: “You’re gonna play for me one day.”
By middle school, Stockton was playing on the eighth-grade team as a sixth grader as a safety. That’s the family genes: His father was an all-conference safety at Georgia Southern.
But playing quarterback was in Stockton’s future, as evident by the time he started high school. By this time, Sonny Smart and George Bobo were long retired, Smart now the father of Georgia’s coach, Bobo still dabbling in personal coaching, including working with Fromm and Bennett.
Rabun County might be small and isolated, but it’s on the football map. There’s a sign entering town proclaiming it the home of Charlie Woerner, a former Georgia tight end who suited up for a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers and now plays for the Atlanta Falcons. There’s also the association with Sonny Smart and thus his son. And then there was Stockton, who guided the team — nickname Wildcats, not Tigers — to a 45-6 record.
Along the way, Stockton broke the state record for career touchdown passes, previously held by Trevor Lawrence, and the record for career total yardage, previously held by Deshaun Watson.
This was all in a low classification, but the college recruiters were still impressed. Before his sophomore year of high school, Alabama and Penn State offered him a scholarship. The next summer came offers from Ohio State, Oregon, LSU, Southern California, Ole Miss and Florida.
But another school had an advantage: South Carolina hired Mike Bobo as its offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in early 2020. Stockton committed to the Gamecocks that summer.
That January, however, Bobo bolted for Auburn. Meanwhile, Kirby Smart was hot after Stockton and got him to flip his commitment to Georgia. A year later, he enrolled in Athens, by which time Mike Bobo had joined the program as an analyst, Smart promoting him to offensive coordinator a year later. But for Stockton, the wait would be long, so long that by the time he saw the field, it was forgotten he was a higher-rated recruit (No. 124 overall in the 2022 class) than Beck had been.
Stockton redshirted during the 2022 season, running the scout team as Bennett led the team to a title. Stockton ascended to No. 3 on the depth chart for the 2023 season, getting mop-up duty in three early blowouts, then nothing until the Orange Bowl. When Brock Vandagriff transferred to Kentucky and Beck led the Bulldogs to a 42-3 halftime lead over decimated Florida State, the coaches put Stockton in for some experience. He passed for two touchdowns and rushed for 46 yards.
But there was never an assurance of anything. Kirby Smart and Mike Bobo pursued an experienced quarterback in the transfer portal after last season, briefly getting UNLV starter Jayden Maiava before he changed his mind and went to USC. This spring, Stockton was asked what he was hoping to gain from another year of being Beck’s backup.
“I’m always trying to learn from anyone in the room,” he said. “And just trying to, God forbid if something happens, prove to everyone that I can step up, and it can click like nothing happened.”
The chance didn’t come until, of all times, the SEC championship. The first drive saw Stockton guide the team on a 75-yard march for a touchdown and the lead. There were some rough moments, especially a late interception when he panicked against a third-down Texas rush. But the final moment was perhaps the most memorable: On an 8-yard scramble up the middle for a first down, Stockton’s helmet was knocked off, but he got right up.
That play harked back to a play in high school that one of George Bobo’s pupils reminded him of a few days later.
“He told me, ‘Coach, it didn’t surprise me when he got up because I saw him get hit in Thomasville. He got blood all over his jersey, and he stuffed cotton up his nose and kept playing,’” George Bobo said. “That’s the type of kid he is. He is very good, very tough, very humble. Nothing fancy about him.”
Stockton drives his grandfather’s 1984 or 1985 Ford pickup that has a CB antenna on it. He likes hunting and fishing just like Fromm, who was also thrust into the limelight by an injury. And Fromm seemed perfectly at ease in that limelight, all the way to almost winning a national championship.
How will Stockton handle becoming the starter on this stage, assuming it happens? (Beck hasn’t been officially ruled out, but all signs point to Stockton at minimum starting the Sugar Bowl.) The second half of the SEC championship bodes well. But Georgia has been a second-half team all year, so there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t have happened if Beck had stayed in the game.
George Bobo is a believer in his pupil but also a realist.
“The only way you can learn is by experience, in a game-type situation,” he said. “You just hope that everybody plays real well, and we find a way to win the football game. Because it ain’t going to be easy.”
(Top photo: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
