Jalen Hurts plays in his first Super Bowl on Sunday, but the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles already knows about the enormous stages of his sport.

He spent his entire college career under intense scrutiny, and that gaze actually might have been hottest of all when Hurts wasn’t even playing.

Hurts starred for two of the most iconic brands in college football, Alabama and Oklahoma, and he won 39 games as a starter over three seasons. That number only begins to explain the legend of Hurts, however, who is a proud Texan from the football-rich city of Houston. If anyone was made for this moment, and the spotlight of all spotlights for American athletes, then it was a quarterback everyone doubted at some point along the way but who, in reality, thrived under pressure and always led his team through big moments.

RELATED: Eagles carrying Alabama hopes into Super Bowl

RELATED: Jalen Hurts’ taste in music reveals layered interests

RELATED: Nick Saban helped put chip on shoulder of Eagles safety

GOODMAN: Kevin Steele is back to haunt Auburn

GOODMAN: Always a learner, DeMeco Ryans makes history

Everyone remembers Hurts being benched for Tua Tagovailoa in the 2018 College Football Playoff national championship game, but Hurts shined in that moment of personal struggle, too. It was Hurts’ positive spirit as a teammate that encouraged Tagovailoa at halftime, during the second half and then in overtime. Afterwards, Hurts and Tagovailoa celebrated together, and then Hurts did the unthinkable and actually returned to Alabama for a junior season as a backup.

Who does that? Only the best of teammates.

Super Bowl LVII is at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Hurts’ Eagles are a 1.5-point favorite over the Kansas City Chiefs. Tuesday was media day, and one of the exchanges between Hurts and a reporter caught my attention. A reporter wanted to apologize to Hurts for doubting him. It was a curious approach to an interview — it wasn’t even a question — but it captured the essence of Hurts’ story.

Said the reporter: “I gotta admit, I didn’t think the Eagles would get to the Super Bowl with you as their quarterback.”

“You’re not the only one,” Hurts said.

There was a fun argument leading up to the Super Bowl about which college football fan base could claim Hurts, Alabama or Oklahoma. If we’re being completely honest, a significant number of people representing both of those teams questioned Hurts as the starting quarterback at both places. Know this, though. Those games at Alabama when Hurts watched from the sideline counted just as much, and maybe more so, towards Hurts’ preparation for his professional career and now this Super Bowl.

I’ve written more columns about Hurts than any other football player I’ve ever covered. I like to call Hurts America’s quarterback not because he’s rated as the best passer, but because no one in the game today better represents the transcendent spirit of resiliency and perseverance. Hurts is toughness personified, and he is defined by the greatest statistic of all and that is the winning percentage of his teams.

Author Tom Wolfe wrote that test pilot Chuck Yeager and America’s early astronauts were made of “the right stuff.” It’s how they thrived under pressure when others might have crashed and burned. Hurts has that same stuff, too.

Is there a more popular athlete in football today? Maybe only the ultra-talented quarterback who will stand opposite of Hurts on Sunday, Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes.

People still doubt Hurts’ ability as a quarterback, but there is no denying the experience level that Hurts is carrying into Super Bowl LVII. He’s pretty much done it all already, and in every way possible.

In the entire history of college football, did a quarterback ever pull on his helmet for more games of significance over the course of a career? He suited up in every College Football Playoff from 2016 to 2019, was the starter in three and maybe should have been the starter in all four. It’s difficult to find anyone who even comes close to Hurts’ absurd measure of team greatness. It’s unparalleled in its brilliance.

Hurts was a starting quarterback in eight playoff games or conference championships. Read that again, and then read this next bit a couple times, too. With a trophy on the line, Hurts was 6-2 as a starter, but that record doesn’t even take into account Hurts’ come-from-behind victory off the bench against Georgia in the 2018 SEC championship game.

That classic game might define every intangible quality that makes Hurts great: bravery, poise, skill, talent and true grit.

In the modern game, quarterbacks Matt Leinhart of USC and Trevor Lawrence of Clemson can be included in Hurts’ exclusive club of high stakes. There are others. Hurts was the captain of colossal college pressure, though, and he carries all of that experience into the biggest game of all. No one ever talks about Hurts being one of the greatest quarterbacks in college football history, but thanks to the College Football Playoff and the ulta-competitive Southeastern Conference, Hurts played (and won) more big games than any quarterback who has come along.

And then this next number is just a preposterous achievement of football history when you really think about it. Hurts was 17-2 as a starting quarterback against ranked teams. There isn’t a Hall of Fame big enough for that winning percentage across 19 contests of quality competition. It’s 89.5 percent.

People somehow forget that Hurts was 14-1 as a freshman quarterback. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty, but why did we start thinking victories in football had to win beauty contests? It’s football. It’s not figure skating (no offense to figure skating, which is great, but a contest between man and ice as opposed to a game that is actually just a peacetime simulation for war).

And you know I just wrote that bit about figure skating so I could gracefully glide into an ending of this Super Bowl column that includes the ultimate temperature gauge of cardiovascular systems on a football field. And that is college football rivalry games. Super Bowls are nice. Iron Bowls are better, and so, too, are those games between Oklahoma and Texas known these days as the Red River Showdown.

Jalen Hurts was the starting quarterback in eight rivalry games during his college career. Rivalry games are when records and stats mean far less than guts and glory. Games made for players like Hurts, in other words. Games that stretch out the right stuff like fire trailing the controlled bomb of a rocket engine.

America’s quarterback was 7-1 in those games as a starter, but not even the Captain of Ice Cold could win at Auburn.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’”. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.