“You can’t take that inside.”

That’s what I was told by a Gate A attendant, who peered over his glasses, inspecting my camera bag.

He was a middle-aged, scruffy-faced man doing a thankless job. But what he’d said wasn’t what I needed to hear.

“Are you serious?” I asked incredulously.

“No professional cameras allowed,” he snapped.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. One came over and confirmed what I’d been told, that my camera and lenses weren’t allowed. I was directed to Gate C where I could check my equipment at some tent until after the game.

I wasn’t very happy. I’d waited in line for some thirty minutes, only to be turned back just as I was about to enter Rose Bowl Stadium.

There was nowhere I felt comfortable leaving my camera and lenses. Leaving them at the checked-items tent, which probably wasn’t very secure, wasn’t an option. Taking them back to the rental car wasn’t either, considering that the car was miles away in a parking garage in downtown Pasadena and kick-off for the 2014 BCS National Championship Game was less than an hour away.

I’d have to figure something out quickly.

I cussed under my breath and a few times aloud. I got the attention of my cousin, Demetria, who’d already been through security. I motioned for her to come back.

I told her what happened. Annoyed, we huddled to figure out what to do. We didn’t have a whole lot of options.

I’d brought my camera because I’d spent the prior four months photographically documenting Florida State’s 2013 football season. I’d taken hundreds of photos, several of which I include in this post, and this game was the season’s culmination. I had to capture it; I had to get my camera in the stadium.

We decided to try another gate.

Noticing Gate B wasn’t as busy as Gate A, the main entrance, had been, I got an idea.

“Hold this,” I told Demetria, handing her my big lens, which seemed to be what the Gate A attendants took issue with most.

I attached my small lens to my camera and placed the camera back in my bag. Demetria hid the big lens in her jacket. We split up and went to two different Gate B attendants.

Not more than thirty seconds later, our tickets had been scanned and we were inside. Relieved, we took in the atmosphere.

It was an incredible, electric scene. The weather was perfect.

Rabid fans, wearing orange and navy or garnet and gold, scurried about to grab a hotdog and beers before taking their seats. The warchant and the “war eagle” battle cry competed for airspace. We saw former FSU running back Chris Thompson, now with the Washington Redskins. He and the other former players with him were as awestruck as we were.

I snapped pictures of the stadium’s iconic south facade as we made our way to our tunnel—Tunnel 22—which was easy to miss. Eventually we found it.

The walk up the ramp revealed the San Gabriel Mountains, red from the sunset, dramatically backdropping the stadium. Players from both teams warmed up on the field.

It was easily the most beautiful scene in all of college football. I was glad I had my camera.

Taking in the view, I thought about my mom, Sharon.

She didn’t make the trip because she doesn’t fly. But I knew she was back home in Florida full of nerves and glued to the television, waiting anxiously for Florida State to run through its banner and take that field.

I couldn’t help but think about how much Florida State football has meant to Mom over the years and how, 17 months ago, it took on a whole new meaning.

August 8, 2012 had been an ordinary day for me.

It was the middle of the week, a beautiful, clear-skied Wednesday. But it was hot out, as summer afternoons in Florida are.

I’d been to work and was on lunch break when I received a call from Mom.

“I have breast cancer,” she eventually, nervously said.

It took a few moments for her words to register. There was silence that Mom eventually broke, saying she didn’t want to tell me that way, over the phone, but that she also didn’t want to keep it from me any longer.

She and her doctors had known for weeks that something was going on. She’d undergone tests, which eventually led to the diagnosis. She’d sought to protect me throughout the testing, the way motherly instincts require. She told me nothing until doctors were certain.

You see, I’m a proud mama’s boy. Growing up, there was nothing else for me to be. So, as you can imagine, the news hit me like a ton of bricks to the face.

It was scary. I got that dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one that always accompanies bad news.

Mom’s sister, Aunt Joyce, battled breast cancer in the mid-90’s. I was much younger then—about twelve—but I remember well the challenges it posed.

“Not again,” I thought.

I had a meeting that afternoon, so I needed to focus back on work.

That wasn’t easy. I remember thinking about the road ahead, trying, I guess, to somehow prepare myself for it. I remember praying.

And I remember it all feeling surreal. But that didn’t last long.

As I sat in my meeting, what Mom told me suddenly stopped feeling surreal and began to feel very real. I waited for the feeling to pass. It never did. Excusing myself, I left the office for the day.

I drove home feeling the weight of it all. As I pulled into my driveway, I saw Demetria there waiting for me. Mom had called and asked her to do that, figuring I’d be upset. I was. Demetria was too. And, in one of those moments that reminds us exactly what family is for, we cried and consoled each other and reassured each other that everything would be all right.

I packed a bag and made the one-hour drive to be with Mom.

When this all started, Mom assured us she’d be fine, so long as she had her faith, her family—and Florida State football.

You’d probably expect that Mom would lean on her faith and family to get through this battle. But to understand that she’d also lean on Florida State football, you’d have to know Mom.

A 1976 alumna of the University, she’s an avid fan of all its sports, but especially football. She loves Florida State football.

The 2012 season was just weeks away. Mom’s treatments were to start soon, so we knew she wouldn’t be able to attend games as usual.

Her faith was intact and our family was rallying. All that was left to do was to figure out how to maximize Mom’s Florida State football experience under the circumstances.

Fan Day was just four days after Mom broke the news. We decided to go. There, she met Coach Jimbo Fisher for the first time and took pictures with some of her favorite players. I remember them all being so kind and happy to pose for a photo with Mom. They made her day.

The next week, I contacted Coach Fisher. I told him about Mom, about her fandom for his program and about her battle. I told him how much it would mean to Mom to receive well-wishes from him.

Sure enough, a week later, Mom received a thoughtful, heartfelt letter from Coach Fisher. Reading it, she beamed.

Things soon became much harder.

Chemotherapy treatments she’d received began to take a toll. Her hair thinned. Her energy waned. And sometimes, while watching games on television, she was too tired to cheer with her normal fervor.

Still, we hoped she’d feel well enough to attend at least one game that season—and she did.

For the Duke game, she and I walked to Doak Campbell Stadium slowly, stopping for breaks as she needed so she could catch her breath. By then, her hair was all gone. Her battle was obvious. But her passion for Florida State football had gone nowhere.

In the first quarter, when EJ Manuel found Rashad Greene for a 71-yard touchdown, she cheered wildly—too wildly, I felt.

“Don’t wear yourself out, Mom,” I said, being, perhaps, a bit overprotective.

“OK, I won’t,” she said, only half-listening.

She paid me no mind. Minutes later, when Tyler Hunter returned a punt for a 75-yard touchdown, she erupted, cheering louder than before.

What I realized then was that, in that moment, Mom wasn’t thinking about her uncomfortable treatments or her hair-loss or her upcoming mastectomy. For her, for those four quarters, life was normal again.

Throughout her battle, that was Florida State football’s gift to Mom—the gift of normalcy. It was her escape.

Days before the 2013 Orange Bowl, where Florida State would face Northern Illinois, I read something that bothered me.

An article revealed that EJ Manuel’s mother, Jackie, had been diagnosed with breast cancer one week before the season, nearly the exact same time as Mom’s diagnosis. The parallels were striking.

EJ talked in the article about the difficulty of seeing his mom sick and not her usual self. He talked about how all that affected him and the perspective he’d gained from the ordeal. I could relate.

What bothered me was that I got the sense EJ felt he wouldn’t have had the support of fans had they known about his mom’s diagnosis. On why he kept his mom’s struggle private, he said, “Nobody else was going to care.”

He added:

“Florida State fans may say sorry, but when you’re not winning games, they’re still going to have things to say negatively or just be upset.”

That made me uncomfortable. And I wanted EJ to know that it wasn’t true. I wanted him to know that I cared, that Mom cared and that we and so many other fans knew exactly what he and his family were going through. I wanted him to know that, while football is fun and while we’re all passionate about it, most of us understand that there is much more to life.

I was able to get in contact with EJ and his family. I told them my Mom’s story and assured them that they had our support. I thanked EJ for the sense of normalcy he and his teammates had given Mom during her battle. I told him how I’d prayed for Mom like never before.

I told him that I’d be praying for his mom too.

EJ’s dad e-mailed me, thanked me for reaching out and said they’d all keep Mom in their own prayers.

Last Labor Day night, after Jameis Winston found the end-zone on a five-yard run against Pittsburgh, Mom sent me an excited text message, celebrating the score.

It was the first game of the 2013 season. And, for the most part, things were back to normal for us.

It had been more than a year since Mom’s diagnosis. She’d completed her chemotherapy treatments. She’d had her surgery. Her hair had grown back. She’d even retired and was now back to her normal routine of cooking and cleaning and tending to my 96-year-old grandmother.

Above all, she was cancer-free.

It also looked like things were getting back to normal—1990s normal—for Florida State football. Drunk off Jameis’ much-ballyhooed debut performance, that night Mom and I declared that this would be the season Florida State would return to the pinnacle of college football.

Honestly, we say that every season. Little did we know.

For the first home-game, against Nevada, Mom was thrilled to be back in Doak, feeling like her old self.

When Kenny Shaw caught a 24-yard touchdown pass right in front of us, she screamed and jumped and applauded, as animated as ever. But this time there was no need to caution her against wearing herself out; she had plenty of energy.

During the course of the game, as she cheered, I snapped picture after picture. And over the next few months—against Maryland, Clemson, North Carolina State, Miami, Syracuse, Idaho, Florida and Auburn—I took hundreds of pictures, with a renewed appreciation for Florida State football, because of what it had meant to Mom and me over the last year.

Sure I wanted Florida State to go all the way, to win it all. But ultimately that didn’t matter to me; I was already full and grateful.

“Damn it!” I blurted, frustrated.

Dejected and in disbelief, I took my seat and put my face in my hands.

Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall had just rushed for a four-yard touchdown, giving his team a stunning 21-3 lead over Florida State. Auburn fans cheered and waved those orange pom-poms. Their fight song reverberated throughout the stadium.

Down three scores, it was hard to see how Florida State could come back. Like most, I thought the game was over.

A couple seated in front of Demetria and me, there only to see a good game and rooting for neither team, made every attempt to keep us in good spirits.

“It’s just the second quarter, man,” the guy turned to me and said between sips of his beer. “But you guys have got to score before halftime.”

Meanwhile, another couple, superstitious Florida State fans seated behind us, asked that Demetria and I switch seats, hoping to counteract Florida State’s ho-hum start. Nothing to lose, we obliged.

Now, it’s hard to say whether that did the trick. But from that point on, it was a completely different ball game. Florida State scored a touchdown before halftime and held Auburn scoreless in the third quarter, while Roberto Aguayo hit a 41-yard field-goal, bringing Florida State within one score.

The fourth quarter was without a doubt the wildest, most emotional football experience of my life.

It began with PJ Williams’ interception, which he fumbled and Lamarcus Joyner recovered. That sequence led to Chad Abram’s 11-yard, rumbling touchdown, my favorite of the night.

I’d never yelled so loud. After having been a lopsided affair for nearly a half, the game had suddenly become a heavy-weight bout. We were right back in it.

On the next series, our defense held Auburn to a field-goal. And then, on the ensuing kickoff, it happened.

Kermit Whitfield’s 100-yard kickoff return, which gave us our first lead since very early in the first quarter, will go down in Florida State football folklore. It was game-changing, and it was exhilarating. Everyone around me high-fived. The couple that had been neutral was now warchanting and tomahawk-chopping. Somehow the band collected itself just long enough to play Massacre.

I yelled so much I got a headache.

But if Auburn had shown us anything over the course of the season, it had shown us its luck. So, this game wasn’t over. And Trey Mason’s rushing touchdown on Auburn’s next series—where Timmy Jernigan, Mom’s favorite, was in and out of the game—put Auburn back ahead and didn’t exactly ease my headache.

That score naturally took some air out of my side of the stadium. But, among us, defeat didn’t set in. The general consensus of folks seated around me was that Auburn had left too much time on the clock.

After all, we had Jameis.

The task was to go 80 yards in just over a minute. And Jameis was up to it.

He hit Rashad for eight yards and then again for 49 yards when Rashad split two defenders. He then hit Devonta Freeman on a screen pass for six yards, moving into red-zone. He’d “matriculated the ball down the field.”

After a timeout, he hit Kenny for five yards. His next completion was to Devonta, putting the ball at Auburn’s five-yard-line—but it was third down.

A delay-of-game penalty moved Florida State back five yards, made it third-and-8 and triggered a chorus of forehead-slaps from folks seated around me.

Unfazed, Florida State’s offense lined up in a four-wide set, with Rashad and Kenny on the left and Christian Green and Kelvin Benjamin on the right. Fortunately, the ball was snapped before the play-clock expired, but Jameis’ pass to Rashad fell incomplete.

The coverage, however, drew a flag. Pass-interference was the call. And so it was now first-and-goal from Auburn’s two yard-line.

We were in business.

An older guy wearing thick glasses was seated in the row in front of me, three or four seats to my right. He had a quirky, slapstick sense of humor and wore an old-school Florida State hat. He and I had talked throughout the game, providing our instant analysis.

Before Florida State broke the huddle, he looked at me and confidently held up one index finger. Kelvin, who of course wears No. 1, was his favorite player. He figured this was to be Kelvin’s moment.

Meanwhile, the guy from the once-neutral-but-now-tomahawk chopping couple was downright giddy—or drunk. “This is it!” he shouted, certain Florida State was about to make the go-ahead score.

And then there was that superstitious couple and Demetria and me, all nervous wrecks, all totally emotionally spent.

With only seconds left to play, Coach Fisher, shielded by towels, made the call. It was go-time. And, judging by the personnel, it looked like Coach Fisher might’ve called a run play, which was plausible considering he had a timeout remaining.

But when the ball was snapped, Jameis faked the handoff to Devonta. Auburn’s linebackers bit, freeing up the middle of the field. Seeing that, Jameis threw a beautiful and high ball to Kelvin on a slant route. And just like the guy with the thick glasses had foretold, this was to be Kelvin’s moment.

Kelvin jumped over the defender, plucked the ball out of the air and secured it as he fell to the turf. It was the game-winning, national title-clinching touchdown.

Thirteen football seconds later, garnet and gold confetti rained from the skies.