It was getting late in Monday night's College Football Playoff title game, the outcome long ago decided, when Clemson defensive lineman Christian Wilkins began to cry, almost uncontrollably.
Nor did these seem like mere happy tears for a stunningly easy 44-16 victory over top-ranked and defending national champ Alabama. These tears sprang from a well buried somewhere deep inside Wilkins. These were tears of redemption, even revenge. These were tears a year in the making.
And that's when you knew. This wasn't just a win forged by superior talent and coaching against the program we all yearly trumpet to have the best talent and coaching this side of whatever NFL team is the defending Super Bowl champion.
This was a victory for passion and heart and focus. A victory to avenge a loss to the Crimson Tide in last year's CFP semifinals. For at least one time in one of these seemingly endless Alabama-Clemson playoff matchups, IT JUST MEANT MORE to the team facing the Southeastern Conference representative than it did to the SEC member.
At least it sure seemed that way, despite the league's ad campaign that always declares that its sports, especially football, just mean more in the SEC than anywhere else.
Of course, most folks with opinions on such things also have long held that if any school not in the SEC acts like an SEC school, it's Clemson, from its rabid fan base to its traditions to its three national titles won since 1981.
This isn't to say that the Tigers are now on the cusp of becoming the dynasty Bama pretty much has been since it won its first national championship with Nick Saban at the helm in 2009. Saban has won four more since then, which might be the kind of run we'll never again see in this sport.
But Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is the only other active coach with more than one natty to his name, his first one coming against Bama two years ago in Tampa. He's also the first coach in more than 120 years to finish a season 15-0.
From an accomplishment such as that did Wilkins - who declined to put his amazingly athletic 6-foot-4, 315-pound body in last year's NFL draft in order to have a shot at a moment such as Monday night - shout to the world once his tears dried: "Best! Team! Ever!"
Maybe they are and maybe they aren't. Next year's Tigers might be even better. They'll almost certainly now be heralded as having the best college quarterback and receiver on the planet in rising sophomores Trevor Lawrence and Justyn Ross, respectively.
And as long as Brent Venables remains the program's defensive coordinator, it's almost impossible to see them not making next season's CFP playoff at the very least.
So while it's a cute quote from Swinney to gush, "I know we're not supposed to be here" and "We're just little old Clemson," this program isn't a little old anything anymore. It's the biggest, baddest program in all of college football, and it figures to challenge for that over the next two seasons, since Lawrence and Ross will be around for at least that long.
But that doesn't mean no one else can win it. If former Georgia quarterback Justin Fields is everything he was expected to be coming out of high school, and the NCAA wrongly rules him eligible for the coming season, he'll have Ohio State back in the playoffs. Texas could get there. Oklahoma could get back there for a third straight season.
Also, had Georgia beaten Texas instead of losing to the Longhorns in the Sugar Bowl, does anyone anywhere doubt the Bulldogs would have been considered a serious threat? Don't sleep on Texas A&M, either. The Aggies played Bama about as well as anyone during the regular season, and love him or loathe him, Jimbo Fisher knows how to build a championship program.
Lastly, regarding Bama, we probably should have seen Monday night coming, at least the distinct possibility of a Crimson Tide loss. Yes, the offense was dazzling throughout, Tua Tagolaivola's laser left arm and all those future NFL wideouts and running backs able to hide a brutal truth rarely uttered about a Saban team.
That truth was that the normally nasty Bama defense was anything but championship stout down the stretch. It wasn't just that the Tide surrendered 17 points to The Citadel. They gave up 21 to Auburn, 28 to Georgia in the SEC title game, 34 to Oklahoma in the national semis, then 44 to Clemson.
While he may have merely been motivating his team, Saban also may have been genuinely worried in October when he said, "People seem to look at our team like a really nice convertible going down the road. Nice shiny wheels, really nice-looking girl driving. Everybody sees that. They don't see the oil leaking and they don't see the bald tires. So we've all got problems. And our team is no different."
What he had, especially in the secondary, was too many new players. Talented players, for sure. But too inexperienced to play championship defense.
But that will change next year. Tua and those receivers will be back. The Tide always will have running backs. The defense, especially on the back end, will look as salty as Saban's defenses usually look.
And unlike this season, the Tide, rather than the Tigers, will be searching for redemption and revenge.
So look for the winner's tears to stream down the face of Bama's Tua a year from now. It's what these two goliaths do. Neither beats the other one two years in a row, so why start now?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com