Terrance Donnels just didn’t have it in him anymore.

The man best known as “LSUFreek” on the internet no longer had the energy or desire to spend hours creating the wackiest and funniest SEC football GIFs. No one seemed to delight SEC fanbases the way Donnels did with inspired Lane Kiffin, Les Miles and Steve Spurrier GIFs that went viral the moment he hit publish.

Only “LSUFreek” could create the now iconic GIF of a neck brace-wearing Bobby Petrino falling off his motorcycle, Bill Clinton giving him a thumbs up and a delighted Miles celebrating in the back of the car in a scene out of Seinfeld.

Or an O.J. Simpson and Johnnie Cochran-inspired creation of Cam Newton after the NCAA exonerated the former Auburn quarterback.

But for as much joy as Donnels gave others, he no longer felt it himself. Five years ago, Donnels made the switch to hospice care at St Joseph Hospice in New Orleans, and it wore him down. He loved the work, but he felt his unique sense of humor slipping away as he lost patients day after day. He’d look back at his old GIFs and photoshops and couldn’t seem to understand what had made them so successful in the first place.

Like Michelangelo forgetting how to paint, Donnels couldn’t gauge what was funny anymore. It all felt dark.

“I really enjoy working in hospice, but man, the toll it takes on you sometimes,” Donnels says. “You’re seeing death every week. I go to work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and people are going to die. It just makes you not as funny.”

So one day, Donnels stopped.

The great creator of your favorite SEC-related GIFs in the early part of this decade largely disappeared in 2015. It prompted message board threads throughout SEC Country wondering what happened to “LSUFreek.” Outside of a few Hugh Freeze-related items when an escort scandal took down the former Ole Miss coach in July 2017, Donnels resisted weighing in on all the weirdness of college football for years. He no longer felt funny, and LSU’s struggles at the end of the Les Miles era left him uninspired.

And then the great LSU triumvirate of Ed Orgeron, Joe Burrow and Joe Brady started taking the college football world by storm. After years of waiting for LSU’s offense to join the 21st Century, LSU suddenly had the presumed Heisman Trophy winner and the most desired offensive assistant in the country. It started with a big win against Texas in Week 2 and the Tigers just kept rolling through opponents with their new high-powered offense.

It’s all Donnels ever wanted for his beloved Tigers. The now 51-year old fell in love with football when his older brother called him over to watch Georgia play in the 1980 Sugar Bowl. Like most of America, the young Donnels was immediately enamored with Georgia running back Herschel Walker.

“I looked to my grandma and said ‘Who’s our team?’” he says. “She said LSU. I said, ‘Do we have a Herschel Walker?’”

And, for many years, the answer was no.

When LSU finally got its version of Walker in Leonard Fournette earlier this decade, Donnels was amazed but he realized the game had changed. A lot had changed since 1980 and a Herschel Walker-type was no longer enough to get LSU back to glory. Instead, he realized, it needed a modern-day version of Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino. When he watched Burrow throw the ball with perfect placement, he slowly started to believe that after what felt like a generation of LSU aimlessly wandering in the desert looking for a viable quarterback, the Bayou Bengals had finally found their Marino.

And, for the first time in years, it made Donnels start to feel the tug to get back into creating his art.

He tweeted after South Carolina upset Georgia he was thinking about getting back in the GIF game. But as LSU continued to win and his confidence grew, he knew he had to wait until the “Game of the Century, Part 2” against Alabama to make his big return. He bought a new advanced photoshop program and readies for whatever might come. When LSU beat the Crimson Tide in Bryant-Denny Stadium, his mind quickly started racing with possibilities. He stayed up all night, rewatching the biggest win of the Ed Orgeron era, as he pieced together the perfect image to explain what that game meant not just for LSU fans but for the entire SEC.

On Monday morning, a little after 10 a.m., “LSUFreek” loudly announced his return to the game with a “Purple Reign” GIF showing Alabama head coach Nick Saban crowning Orgeron while Paul Finebaum and Harvey Updyke look on in shock. The replies quickly started rolling in, telling Donnels, “The GIF God is back!!” and “You are the master LSUFreek! My soul needed this!”

He genuinely appreciates the kind responses he gets, but he still has doubts. When you feel like you’ve had your funny sucked out of you when confronting death every day, it takes more than one popular GIF to feel like you’re funny again. He questions whether people still enjoy his sense of humor even as the likes and retweets roll in. He long judged his success on if his father, John Donnels, reached out to him about it. John Donnels isn’t hanging out on Twitter but when his son’s past creations were particularly popular, his friends down at the marine repair shop would tell him about it.

There is no father-son call about “Purple Reign,” his first real foray back into what made him an internet sensation. “When he calls me over one day,” Terrance says, “it’ll be a good sign I rediscovered my funny bone.”

He’s still working off the rust but trying to enjoy the LSU ride as long as he can. In the lead up to championship weekend, which features his Tigers against Georgia in the SEC Championship, Donnels does hair swaps for all the championship coaches. Not all of them are big hits but a few, like Orgeron-Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney-Bronco Mendenhall are striking and gain traction. It’s another small win for him.

I'm gonna try to do a series of Conference Championship Hair-Swaps today. Here's Smart and Ogeron for starters:#SECCG #HairSwap https://t.co/vz8sg9ReXL pic.twitter.com/XNyS1uL1vY — Terrance Donnels (@LSUFreek) December 2, 2019

On Saturday, Donnels will be glued to his television, ready to make the next great GIF that captivates SEC fans everywhere. He’s so enjoyed this LSU run that he hasn’t started thinking about what he’ll do, he’ll just let it come to him.

After years of self-imposed exile, “LSUFreek” is back.

Hopefully for good.

“I think so,” Donnels says as he takes a long pause. “Yes, I feel it right now. I’m inspired right now. How long will that last? I don’t know. But I feel it right now.”

John Talty is the SEC Insider for Alabama Media Group. You can follow him on Twitter @JTalty.