Cameron Watts Scored Twice in the First 47 Seconds of the Fountain City Classic

COLUMBUS, Ga.

The 36th Fountain City Classic was 47 seconds old when it stopped being a contest.

Cameron Watts took the opening kickoff 93 yards for a touchdown. Fort Valley State's offense came out, ran three plays, and on the third one Watts stepped in front of the pass and ran it back 53 yards for another. Fourteen to nothing, 47 seconds into the game, and a senior defensive back playing the last rivalry game of his life had scored twice before Fort Valley had finished its first series.

That is the whole ballgame, honestly. Everything after was arithmetic. Albany State beat Fort Valley State 49–0 on Saturday at A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium, its fourth straight win in the Classic and eighth in nine years, and the Golden Rams did it behind a player who decided the afternoon before most of the crowd had settled in. The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer put the crowd at 21,347; WTVM's estimate ran higher, 35,000 to 40,000 in the building. The ones still finding their seats missed the part people will talk about.

The third play, again

Watts was not done, either. Albany State opened the second half up 28–0, Fort Valley got the ball, and on the third play — the third play again — Watts picked off his second pass of the day and ran it down to the Fort Valley 2-yard line. One play later, Avery Hall caught a 2-yard touchdown pass from Jeffery Davis. Some players have a nose for the ball. Watts had the script.

The Classic's Most Valuable Player award was the least surprising announcement of the weekend. Watts finished with four tackles, two interceptions returned for 88 yards, the kickoff return touchdown and a pass breakup — a stat line that covers all three phases of a football team by itself. On Tuesday the conference caught up: the SIAC and D2Football both named him their Defensive Player of the Week.

Pinned on the 5, gone in one play

The one moment Fort Valley threatened to make it interesting, Albany State answered with the longest play of the day. Midway through the second quarter, the Wildcats pinned the Golden Rams on their own 5-yard line. Roderick McCrary took the handoff and went 95 yards. McCrary needed only six carries to pile up 110 yards and two touchdowns — the 95-yarder and a 9-yard score in the third quarter — leading a 246-yard Albany State ground game. Jayden Threatts added 58 yards on eight carries, and Sincere Rodriguez closed the scoring with a 22-yard touchdown run with 10:37 left.

Davis, the quarterback, barely had to break a sweat: 10 of 13 for 95 yards and two touchdowns, the second a 5-yarder to Jaquan Graham just before halftime. Graham caught four passes for 32 yards.

And the defense made sure 49 points of margin was not the only zero on the board that mattered. Fort Valley managed 207 yards of total offense all afternoon against Albany State's 369. Rontavion Scott led the Golden Rams with eight tackles, six of them solo. Evan Wynn had five tackles, an interception that sealed the shutout and a forced fumble. Hall — when he wasn't catching a touchdown — recorded five stops, a sack and two tackles for loss. Ian Rembert added two sacks and Derrick Drayton forced another fumble. It was the kind of defensive afternoon where the highlights run out before the names do.

The stakes underneath the blowout were real. The win pulled Albany State to 5–5 on the season and preserved a run of 25 straight non-losing seasons. Fort Valley fell to 2–7. A rivalry in its 36th edition in Columbus is supposed to produce afternoons Fort Valley can point to. Lately it produces afternoons like this: four straight Albany State wins, and now one that was over inside a minute.

Watts came into Saturday as a senior from Tyrone, Georgia, playing Fort Valley for the final time. Players say they want to leave a mark on a rivalry. Most of them mean a play. He left two of them in the first 47 seconds, a third takeaway to open the second half, and a trophy photo at the end of it — Albany State's players holding both Fountain City Classic trophies on the field where he'd just buried the Wildcats.

The Golden Rams close the regular season Saturday at Shorter University in Rome, a 1 p.m. kickoff, with a winning record riding on it. Whatever happens there, the Classic is already filed away. Forty-seven seconds was all it took.