In the tunnel, Greg Byrne stood with a sheepish smile. It was chaos around him, but Alabama's athletic director stood quietly with a football tucked under his arm.

"The football," he said with a grin.

It was that ball that Tua Tagovailoa threw 41 yards to DeVonta Smith and straight into Alabama lore at 12:09 a.m. Tuesday in Atlanta.

It was that ball Byrne walked back to Alabama's locker room for presentation to Nick Saban.

And that inflated leather will live as long as the Crimson Tide celebrates football. It's the physical embodiment of the final moment in the craziest national championship of the Nick Saban era -- or perhaps any of the now 17 claimed by Alabama.

The catch coming soon to canvas wall art capped the whimsical emotional swings of nine minutes in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It began right at midnight as Andy Pappanastos 36-yard kick for history hooked off to the left for overtime.

A 51-yard overtime field goal from Georgia, then a first-down sack had the Bulldogs on the cusp. Second-and 26 from the 41, going straight into the teeth of a super-majority Georgia crowd.

In the huddle, Smith had a message for his fellow freshman at quarterback.

"Trust me, bro," Smith told Tagovailoa.

The QB nodded.

Alabama 26, Georgia 23.

On the sideline, benched starting quarterback Jalen Hurts admitted he was a little surprised to see the ball thrown where it was on that play. A beaming Hurts said with the two-safety look, they weren't expecting that throw on the sideline.

That, however, was exactly what Smith wanted.

"No, I felt it was going to come my way," Smith said. "With the way they were playing Cover-2, I knew there was going to be hole."

There's a little more to Smith's story, too.

The Amite, La., product was once headed to Athens. He was committed to Georgia before Mark Richt was fired in 2015. That reopened his recruitment and eventually he landed in Tuscaloosa.

Exactly one year earlier, after the U.S. Army All-American game, Smith was asked who helped bring him to Alabama. Of course, it was Tagovailoa.

"We can do big things at Bama," Devonta Smith said Tagovailoa told him a year earlier to add a prophetic twist to the moment. "That's the place to be."

Back on the field, a swarm of former Alabama players celebrated a still dizzying twist of fortune with their former teammates. A few had their own Daniel Moore moments in recent Alabama history.

"I feel like I played the game," said a visibly exhausted Kenyan Drake, owner of the 95-yard kickoff return immortalized from Alabama's 2015 national title win over Clemson.

"Yeah," interrupted Marlon Humphrey, "the onside kick was pretty legendary too."

O.J. Howard had a few iconic touchdowns in that last championship, too.

"Tua's performance is the all-time greatest, ever," he said in the on-field madness. "You don't think you're going to come in to do that and win this game? Legendary."

It was a mob scene everywhere the quarterback ran after the game. Photographers piled up by the stairs where his parents waited to embrace their son. There were tears.

In the locker room, only a few reporters gathered to chat with the receiving end of the 41-yard game-winner.

Life will certainly change for the freshman from Louisiana. The moment was still processing amid the celebration.

Smith promised it won't change him, though.

"I'm just me," Smith said. "Nothing is going to change that."

Trent Richardson, among the alums in the postgame party, had advice for Smith and Tagovailoa.

"Never stop eating," he said.

Moments like this are rare. Interestingly, neither part of the game-winning connection were in Tampa to feel the burn of being on the other side of a last-second game-winner.

The last few Alabama national championship wins weren't as exciting. Even that 2015 championship -- Alabama 45, Clemson 40 -- ended with a Jake Coker kneel down. The wins over Texas (2009), LSU (2011) and Notre Dame (2012) were comfortable on the conservative end -- blowouts with the Tigers and Irish.

You have to go back to the goal-line stand of the 1979 Sugar Bowl win over Penn State to find a national-title moment that even compared to Monday night's walk-off.

None of the postgame scenes from the four previous Saban titles felt quite like it did early Tuesday morning in Atlanta. There was an extra degree of genuine joy considering the ending and the factors in play. Senior linebacker Shaun Dion Hamilton, out for the year with a knee injury still weeks away from running, hopped on one leg toward the dog pile after Smith's winning touchdown.

"It was hard trying to handle all my emotions but it's my good leg," Hamilton said. "I'm really speechless right about now."

Alabama looked dead a few times in this game. There were injuries and a quarterback swap after as ugly of a first half imaginable. Down 20-7, Tagovailoa threw an interception deep in Georgia territory. The obituary was written.

Then it was back. Last year's loss to Clemson was buried when Smith crossed that goal line. Nick Saban tied Bear Bryant with six national titles in that moment. He's still yet to be beaten by a former assistant after that catch.

A freshman quarterback entering the game down 13 only to engineer a comeback capped by a 41-yard pass to another rookie? His big performance outshined the Georgia true freshman QB who decommitted from Alabama with a throw to a receiver who flipped from Georgia.

In the end, it was simple.

Smith saw the cornerback was playing outside at the snap. He slipped inside, found the seam and ran 41 yards into Alabama football history.

"I've never been happier in my life," Saban said on the field in the aftermath of the latest iconic Alabama moment.

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande.