What did Chad Powers do? The 10 seconds that turned a college star into a national punchline
Technically, Chad Powers did nothing. Chad Powers doesn't exist. He's a wig, a prosthetic face, and a chirpy "yes ma'am" energy stretched over the smoldering wreck of a man named Russ Holliday.
Russ Holliday, on the other hand, did plenty, and he did it all in front of a national TV audience in the time it takes to microwave a burrito.
Second one: the drop
Picture it. Rose Bowl. Oregon vs. Georgia, tied 31–31, four seconds left. Russ (Glen Powell, having the time of his life) breaks free and sprints for the winning touchdown of the national title game. He's at the ten. He's at the five. He starts celebrating — arms up, legend mode activated — and drops the ball at the one-yard line before crossing the goal line. Georgia scoops it up and runs it all the way back. Ballgame.
If that move sounds familiar, it's because it's a real disease among real athletes; college football fans immediately clocked it as a DeSean Jackson special. (Those same fans also gleefully pointed out that the national championship can't actually be played at the Rose Bowl — "National Championship at the Rose Bowl?" one wrote — which is the most college-football-fan behavior imaginable.)
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Seconds two through ten: the crash-out
The fumble alone is survivable. Athletes have come back from worse. What Russ does next is the unsurvivable part:
- A young fan with cancer approaches to console his hero.
- Russ responds like an absolute jerk.
- The kid's dad calls him out.
- Russ swings at the dad — and knocks over the child's wheelchair. On camera. On the biggest broadcast of the year.
Career: over. Reputation: radioactive. Eight years later he's couch-surfing at his dad's place, which is where the wig comes in, because his dad happens to be an Oscar-winning prosthetics artist. Enter "Chad Powers," homeschooled oddball, walk-on quarterback for the South Georgia Catfish.
The guy under the guy under the wig
The whole show grew out of an Eli Manning sketch, but Powell built Russ from a collage of real football flameouts. As he told Time:
"There's not one face to Russ Holliday."
Which is generous of him, because the rest of us can think of a face or two. The tragedy-comedy engine of the series is that ten seconds of Russ keeps detonating everything Chad builds — and honestly? Ten seconds is all it ever takes.
Previously we wrote: Historians still can't name what killed Shakespeare's son: how much of "Hamnet" is actually true
