Courtesy UGA Sports CommAfter spending four years with the Bulldogs, running back Nick Chubb has become the second leading rusher in SEC history, standing only behind Georgia great Herschel Walker.

ATHENS — For a few days before the Rose Bowl, Nick Chubb returned home. Georgia players headed out of Athens for Christmas, and Chubb retreated to Cedartown to spend the short break with his family.

Normally when Chubb’s home, he’ll spend time with his close friends, but somehow none of them were in Cedartown this time. So apart from going to an indoor game center one night, Chubb enjoyed a quiet holiday. That privacy, Chubb’s mom said, was special enough.

At home, they never try to pretend football doesn’t exist. Chubb’s mom pays attention and she cares. Her son is one of the most important pieces to Georgia’s 2017 season. Naturally, his athletic endeavors pop up in conversation. Still, Chubb’s house functions as a safe haven of sorts. It’s a place where nobody begs for an autograph. A list of statistical milestones doesn’t accompany his name.

The fanfare that arises when you’re a star on one of the nation’s top teams isn’t what Chubb craves. He’s quite the opposite — a quiet, reserved athlete who deflects attention away from himself.

“He just has a love for football,” Chubb’s mom, La’Velle Gregory, said. “He knows what else comes with it. There are pros and cons to everything. But if he could do it without being in the spotlight, he would.”

There’s essentially no such thing as college football success without the limelight. Chubb fully understands that, his mom said. The sport is one of the country’s most public stages. Especially if you’re winning.

So when Chubb arrived in Los Angeles the day after Christmas, his low-key break in Cedartown turned into a public spectacle in Pasadena. A video that featured his look of terror on a Disneyland ride went viral online. Audio recorders waved in his face throughout media sessions. Finally, after a week of festivities and practice, the College Football Playoff semifinal game against Oklahoma began

All eyes on Georgia, all eyes on Chubb.

***

If you subtract the crowd noise, it’s hard to guess the significance of Chubb plowing his way into the end zone with less than a minute left in the Rose Bowl. It doesn’t look like a score that tied the game, allowing Georgia to eventually win in double overtime. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a moment where Chubb kept Georgia’s national title hopes alive.

He didn’t pound his fist into the air. There was no high-stepping in the end zone or personal celebration. He simply tossed the ball to the referee and turned around to his teammates, who threw their arms around the running back.

The even-keeled Nick Chubb who modestly celebrated a Rose Bowl-tying touchdown is what Chubb was like through high school, at least in public environments, said Nick Tran, who played at Cedartown High School but wasn’t close friends with Chubb.

Chubb isn’t introverted, his mom said. Shy doesn’t feel like the right description either, according to Israel Battle, who’s known Chubb since elementary school. But there’s one word that everyone — his mom, his close friends and his high school coaches — agree to be fitting. Chubb is private.

“I consider myself to be close with him, and if I text him, I get a one-word response or two,” said Scott Hendrix, Cedartown’s former head football coach. “That’s just kind of how he is.”

Chubb’s never rude, Hendrix said. It’s just he answers questions to the extent they require, whether that be a paragraph or a single word.

Before Georgia’s regular season finale against Georgia Tech, both Chubb and senior running back Sony Michel stood inside Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall answering questions from reporters. For much of his interview, Michel talked about his relationship with Chubb — his roommate and friend.

“I’m surprised y’all got him here to do media,” Michel said.

It’s not that Chubb specifically dreads interviews. He just “doesn’t like to talk” in public, Michel said.

When Chubb was a senior in high school, he was asked to give a speech during a pep rally before Cedartown’s game against Rockmart, a rival school. Chubb convinced Battle to speak instead.

But that’s just the version of Chubb the rest of the world sees, not the one who his friends and family know.

“I call Nick a jelly bean sometimes, to be honest with you,” said Charles Prior Jr., who also played football at Cedartown. “He’s a hard guy. I feel like he’s mushy on the inside.”

Chubb loves his dog like it’s his child. Then there’s the way Chubb laughs excessively. When they’re in public together, Michel said he talks while Chubb laughs. Chubb’s closest friends from high school agreed one of the easiest ways to get the 5-foot-10, 225-pound tailback is simple: tickle him.

“Nick is the biggest teddy bear you will ever meet,” Battle said. “If you tickle this man, he is going to die, like rolling [on] the floor laughing. And he’s not going to stop laughing. You’re going to laugh just because he’s laughing so hard.”

***

The number of people in Chubb’s inner circle has always been small — a “quality over quantity” approach, one friend called it. The running back’s close-knit group has remained constant through his childhood.

“When he comes back home, I already know who he’s going to be with, no questions asked,” Tran said.

Meet the Cedartown Untouchables, or C.U.T. for short: Israel Battle, Charles Prior Jr., James Sewell, Demond Bryan and Nick Chubb. Chubb has known Bryan, Battle and Sewell since he was in elementary school and became friends with Prior in seventh grade. It took some time for all five to become close, but since the beginning of high school, this crew has been steady.

“Our little C.U.T. group?” Battle said. “That runs deep.”

They all played football in high school, and they’d sometimes spend the night together before waking up to go to practice. They’d play Madden and NBA 2K. They’d watch “Teen Wolf” and “Dragon Ball Z.” Prior’s house was their headquarters. They still call it that. He lived walking distance from McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Peek Forest Park, where they would occasionally play hide-and-seek with friends after the park had closed.

Chubb’s close friends remember the running back talking about thunderstorms. Thunder and lightning make Chubb feel powerful, as if he’s recharging. Chubb’s a fan of Batman, and Prior said he thinks his friend has a similar persona. He works behind-the-scenes, away from the hoopla and the fanfare.

That’s the Chubb they know, a friend who is surprisingly ticklish and enjoys M&M McFlurries. His status as the top running back on a team heading to the national championship hasn’t changed that.

“I’m just his friend,” Prior said. “That’s all I ever want to be.”

With his friends, Chubb becomes Nick. They still use the same GroupMe that began in high school. Right now, the group name is simply “The Untouchables.” The five former teammates recently saw each other when they went to Cedartown’s 2017 graduation and then spent a weekend together in Buckhead, an area of Atlanta. As for the initial common thread that brought them together almost a decade ago, Sewell said they all had the same goal: “To be the most successful people we could possibly be.”

Sewell is a U.S. Marine stationed in Okinawa, Japan, so he was reached for this story through a messaging app. Battle just finished playing his senior season of football at the Citadel, an FCS school in Charleston, S.C. Prior and Bryan both go to Georgia Southern, where they live together. And then there’s Chubb.

“What he meant to the town was the possibility, opportunity,” Prior said. “He’s shown that it’s possible for people in our town, who are good and talented, [to] make it out, if they do what they’re supposed to do.”

***

Mike Worthington, an assistant coach at Cedartown, isn’t one to see a ninth-grader and crown him the next great SEC running back. When Worthington met Chubb, he told the young athlete he would have the potential to play in college but how far he’d go would depend on his work ethic.

“Nick probably listened to that more than any athlete I’ve ever been around,” said Hendrix, who preached the same message to the high-schoolers.

As Chubb’s high school career progressed, he started doing extra workouts with Worthington. If there was ever a snow day, Worthington said, Chubb would stay with a friend who lived closer to the school so Worthington could pick him up.

Chubb also ran track, which Worthington coached, so the two were together year-round. Even now, they text back-and-forth a few times each week. Chubb still trains with Worthington whenever he has breaks from school. Chubb is like a second son, Worthington said.

“He challenged me to be a better coach,” Worthington said. “I didn’t want to be the reason he was not successful.”

People in Cedartown have specific moments etched in their minds, times when they recognized Chubb’s potential.

Prior remembers a particular run from their senior year where he insists Chubb broke eight tackles on his way to the end zone. Cedartown’s former offensive coordinator, Tony Lundy, remembers a time Chubb carried the ball 29 times and scored five touchdowns in one half.

There isn’t much accessible footage of high school games, so it’s almost as though these memories come together to create a Cedartown folktale of a hometown kid becoming a big-time player — only in this case, the story of Nick Chubb is true.

Although Chubb’s high school locker typically featured a massive stack of recruiting mail, the process never became a flashy, high-profile situation because “Nick didn’t let it get that way,” Hendrix said.

Before Chubb officially announced his decision to play for Georgia, Hendrix wanted to make sure he had told Tim Horton, Auburn’s running backs coach who had also recruited Chubb. Without being prompted by his coach, Chubb had already called.

***

Chubb started his college career off on the right foot. Or was it the left?

Chubb scored his first touchdown as a Bulldog wearing one shoe. In his debut against Clemson, the freshman ran 47 yards into the end zone, breaking free from a few defenders who received nothing in return apart from Chubb’s left shoe.

Since then, Chubb has scored 47 more touchdowns, the two most recent coming in the College Football Playoff semifinal. Herschel Walker stands as the only SEC player to ever rush for more yards than Chubb, who has 4,744 yards on the ground with one game to go.

“It’s probably going to be something we’ll have to look back on,” Michel said. “I can see that he’s as good as advertised. But it’s something that himself, me and other people will probably look back like, ‘Dang, he was really that good.’”

Chubb’s name generated some Heisman buzz his sophomore year, but a knee injury abruptly ended that conversation and his season. In the two years since, Chubb has been part of a backfield that spreads carries all around, making individual awards harder to claim. Chubb doesn’t mind.

“I don’t want it,” Chubb said when asked about the Heisman Trophy earlier this year. “They can keep it.”

He’s never needed individual attention. In high school, Chubb’s mom thought her son deserved a couple awards he didn’t receive. Chubb always shrugged it off, so his mom would also let it go.

Just over a year ago, Chubb had to decide whether he would remain in Athens for his senior season or declare for the NFL Draft. For a couple weeks, Chubb’s mom knew there was the possibility her son would stay, but she didn’t hear officially until just before the announcement.

When Chubb called Kirby Smart, the Georgia coach knew this must be why the tailback was reaching out, Smart said as he retold the story at this year’s SEC Media Days. Smart just didn’t know which route Chubb had chosen.

“Coach, I’m kind of different,” Smart remembers Chubb saying. “I decide things based on my faith and decide things based on different reasons than other people do. I’m not motivated by the money. I want to come back.”

In his senior year, Chubb has rushed for 1,320 yards and 15 touchdowns. But those statistics aren’t why he stuck around. There was something else Chubb felt he hadn’t accomplished as a Georgia player.

“Win more games,” Chubb said.

The Bulldogs are 13-1, and they have a chance to win the biggest game on Monday.