WATCH: We Finally Have the Footage of Nick Saban Benching Jalen Hurts for Tua Tagovailoa in the 2017 National Championship

What a moment.

In just Kirby Smart's second season, Georgia was on the verge of wrestling away the stranglehold Alabama and Nick Saban, had on college football. The Dawgs led 13-0 at halftime of the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship when Saban decided he was going to bench a struggling Jalen Hurts for true freshman Tua Tagovailoa.

Interestingly, Saban didn't even really tell Hurts he was getting definitively benched. He said Tua would start the second half but that Alabama would then "play two guys." Hurts never re-entered the game.

Saban also sounded like he would have preferred Brian Daboll to tell the quarterbacks about the change, which feels like something that could have only come from Saban in that moment, but I guess nobody was eager to deliver that news.

But credit to Jalen Hurts, man. He got benched at halftime of a national title game, watched his backup lead an insane comback and become an instant legend, stayed at Alabama to then be Tua's backup for a season in which he would save the SEC Championship Game after a Tua injury in the same building where he'd been benched the season prior, finished his collegiate career with a solid season at Oklahoma and then still went on to be a Super Bowl-winning quarterback in the NFL. That's some mental toughness.

And in what was probably the worst moment of his football life up to that point, he had someone putting a camera on max zoom right in his face.

It's crazy to think about the butterfly effect of this moment. Alabama won its fifth title under Saban in this game and got another one in 2020, making Saban the undisputed greatest coach in the history of the sport. But if Smart had gotten his first one at Georgia all the way back in 2017, would Saban have ever gotten another one? Would Smart have as many titles at UGA right now as Saban would have finished with at Alabama? Going to Tagovailoa in that moment could be one of the most impactful legacy decisions any coach has ever made.

Good thing it worked.