It took all of about 45 seconds for the south goalpost to be lost from its perch contrasting against the night sky into the storm of rain-soaked drunken dudes parading it around as a trophy of their own. Before the clock struck a fateful and championship-clinching 0:00, the Troy students had raced around from the student section to behind the end zone, ready to leap over the short fence and right to those yellow poles.

It was the way they’d celebrated on this team field last year in this same game. That time it was their first, and you never forget your first. Now a year later, following a 49-23 blowout win over Appalachian State in the Sun Belt championship game, Troy lifted the trophy, the actual trophy, for a second year in a row.

Troy is now 23-4 under the two-year tenure of head coach Jon Sumrall. But this team wasn’t built quite like last year’s was. This team had 27 members of a 2023 signing class and 18 incoming transfers.

Those new faces hadn’t seen a celebration like this before. Then there was cornerback Don Callis. He came to Troy this year from Division II East Central Oklahoma University. And when he looked down the field from the trophy presentation stand, he asked his coach the most innocent of questions.

“Won’t we get fined for that,” Callis asked Sumrall.

“Don’t worry, don’t think it’s your money, bud,” Sumrall told Callis sitting together in the post-game press conference.

Callis made the play causing the game’s biggest turning point, stripping the ball from Appalachian State quarterback Jose Aguilar and running it in himself for a 10-yard touchdown. It came six seconds after Troy’s offense had just scored a touchdown of its own, and put away the game for good.

Sitting next to Callis in the post-game press conference was running back Kimani Vidal, the game’s MVP. He had a championship game record-setting night with 233 rushing yards and five touchdowns. He averaged nine years per attempt.

He accounted for every single Troy touchdown save for Callis’ scoop and score.

And he was with Troy last season for a heartbreaking loss on a hail mary against Appalachian State, exactly 441 days ago. Sumrall said that the game being last season had been long put in the rearview.

“In our meetings and Coach Sumrall talking, we didn’t talk about how it ended at all,” Vidal said. “We knew it was going to be a physical battle, and it was that. I feel like we answered the bell today.”

But that might not be the whole truth.

Troy’s official social media accounts posted a hype video for this game that began with the scene for ESPN’s College Gameday in Boone, North Carolina for last year’s game. It showed star country singer Luke Combs as the guest picker emphatically selecting his Mountaineers. Troy hadn’t played Appalachian State since, and that memory hasn’t gone away just yet. By now, it may have.

Vidal was presented with his MVP award on stage on the Larry Blakeney Field surrounded by herds of emotional family members, kids with unbridled smiles running around the turf, couples kissing in the endzone and frat boys holding up two fingers for the two championships while they took puffs other rather large cigars.

And in the center of it all was Sumrall. Troy has more Sun Belt championships than any team in this league — now with eight to its name — but few have seen a run of success quite like Sumrall’s. Troy had three consecutive five-win seasons from 2019-2021. Sumrall went 12-2 last year in his opening season, and he’s 11-2 already this year with a bowl game still to play.

Sumrall has engineered the type of success that gets calls from bigger schools to come coach for them. The Kentucky alum nearly had his alma mater’s job open up this offseason. For now, that day hasn’t come.

The champion of the Sun Belt, Troy made itself a case to take the one guaranteed spot in a New Year’s Six Bowl given to a Group of 5 team. Tulane, the current highest-ranked team, lost to SMU in the American Athletic Conference game. Based on current rankings, Liberty and SMU appear ahead of Troy in the pecking order, but Sumrall made his case.

“We had 12 of 14 teams in our league bowl eligible,” Sumrall said. “To win in this league is hard. I’ve coached in the SEC, this is like coaching in the SEC Group of 5. That’s what it’s like. You better be ready to strap it up every week. Louisiana Monroe took this App State team to the wire and they gave us a handful at times. There’s Southern Miss. There’s no week off in this league.”

Sumrall’s answer doesn’t include the first-place team in the Sun Belt’s east division: James Madison. The Dukes were ineligible to play in the championship game because of an NCAA rule during their transition from FCS to FBS. James Madison will, however, play in a bowl game. James Madison beat Troy this season.

James Madison’s name hasn’t come up around this team. They don’t view this as a title with an asterisk. Sumrall’s team had its own history with Appalachian State anyway.

When the stadium cleared, the rain finally slowed. The north endzone goalpost still stands, the south just a gray covering jolted off to an angle, resting over what little ripped metal shard remained.

Bits of confetti remained stuck to the field, the score still plastered for the few stragglers to see and an ad to buy Troy Sun Belt championship merchandise, — again — shown big on both scoreboards.

The celebration still continued. Two hours after the game ended, the Troy managers walked back onto the field with the Sun Belt trophy. In the stands, trash collectors stopped what they were doing, picked up bottles left over the in stands, shook them and sprayed them toward the managers on the field as if in a baseball clubhouse after winning the World Series.

And the goalpost found its way back onto campus, again.