Inside the 2018 Rose Bowl, the first Georgia-Oklahoma game

A half that belonged to Oklahoma

Oklahoma, the No. 2 seed, led 31-14 with six seconds left in the first half. The last points came from a trick play in which receiver CeeDee Lamb threw a two-yard touchdown pass to Mayfield. According to the game's Wikipedia summary, it was the first pass Mayfield ever caught in college, in the final game of his college career.

Georgia did not simply jog to the locker room. The Bulldogs fielded the squib kick, completed a pass and sent out Rodrigo Blankenship, a former walk-on who kicked in protective glasses, and he made a 55-yard field goal. That kick set a Rose Bowl record and cut the deficit to 31-17.

The comeback, then the counterpunch

Georgia scored the first 21 points of the second half to lead 38-31. Oklahoma answered twice: Mayfield found Dmitri Flowers for an 11-yard touchdown, and safety Steven Parker returned a fumble for a score and a 45-38 lead with 6:52 left. Nick Chubb tied it on a two-yard run with 55 seconds remaining.

The first overtime produced matching field goals. In the second, Lorenzo Carter blocked Oklahoma's 27-yard attempt, and Sony Michel took a direct snap and ran 27 yards for the winning touchdown. Final: Georgia 54, Oklahoma 48.

Look past the trick plays and it was a ground war. Georgia ran for 317 yards, and Sports Illustrated's game story notes that Michel produced 181 of them. Oklahoma answered with Anderson's 201. Mayfield still threw for 287 yards and two touchdowns, with one interception, in his last college game, per Oklahoma's notes. The block that ended it was, by Sports Illustrated's count, Georgia's third blocked field goal of that season, so Carter's hand in the air was less a miracle than a habit.

Records that came with it

It was the first Rose Bowl to reach overtime. The 102 combined points made it the highest-scoring Rose Bowl, one point past USC's win over Penn State a year earlier. Wikipedia's account puts the television audience at 26.8 million viewers, a figure best treated as approximate because the original ratings release was not available to check.

There is also a sweet bit of history for Georgia. The only other time the Bulldogs had played in the Rose Bowl was January 1, 1943, a 9-0 win over UCLA with Heisman winner Frank Sinkwich and Charley Trippi in the backfield. After that game, the Georgia team toured a Hollywood studio and met film stars. Seventy-five years later the reward was a trip to the national title game, which Georgia lost to Alabama in overtime.

Why it still matters in 2026

My opinion is that the game's real legacy is how it set the tone for Georgia under Smart. He was in only his second season, and Georgia's own notes describe the Bulldogs playing for a national title that early. The 2021 and 2022 championships came later.

The echo I like best, though, is smaller. In the Athens game on September 26, 2026, Georgia kicker Peyton Woodring made his 201st straight extra point, breaking a Georgia and SEC record held by Blankenship. The kicker in protective glasses, a former walk-on, ended up in the second Georgia-Oklahoma story too, as the name on the record that fell. Our main page on the series has the full picture of both games.