As a St. Louis Cardinals, and an avowed hater of our fierce rivals, the Chicago Cubs, I spent most of the first 40 years of my life warning whoever would listen that a Cubs World Series championship would bring about the end of the world. The Cubs won the World Series on November 2, 2016; Donald Trump was elected President on November 8, 2016. I’m just saying.

Still, I did grow up in Central Illinois and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: I know and care about many Cubs fans. (You have to love the people close to you even when they make terrible choices in their lives.) And when their team won that World Series in 2016, something about them changed. They had been carrying a burden their entire lives — a minor burden, but a burden nevertheless. They had feared they would go their entire lives without their team, their beloved Cubs, ever winning a World Series. This fear was well-founded. After all, it had been since 1908 that the Cubs had won a title: Their grandparents had gone their whole lives without winning one. But then the Cubs won. And my friends were so happy. They were so free. It was as if they hadn’t realized how much of a weight they were carrying until they didn’t have to carry it anymore. They really haven’t been the same since. They’ve had struggles and tumult and woe in their lives like the rest of us have. But they don’t have that burden anymore. There is, in all of them, since that title … a bit of peace.

I thought about all my Cubs fan friends Monday night when the Georgia Bulldogs won their first college football championship since 1981 with a 33–18 victory over Alabama, their longtime tormentors. I live in Athens — it’s where my book How Lucky is set — and am surrounded every day by people who love Georgia football as much as they love anything. (I also love the Dawgs, but I’ll always be an Illini first.) 1981 isn’t 1908, but in the context of college football fandom, all told, 41 years is a long, long time, particularly for a fanbase as avid and vast as Georgia’s. I was at the game in Indianapolis and haven’t been back to Athens yet — I’m writing this at the airport right before heading home, actually — but you don’t have to look far to see the giddy, almost slack-jawed looks on Georgia fan faces this morning. They thought this day would never come. And then it came. Their lives will never be the same.

In a logical, rational sense, watching sports is a silly activity: It doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t really affect your life, the people you’re cheering for aren’t really a part of your life. But that’s what makes it so important. The joy we get from it is uncomplicated, simple and perfect: It belongs solely to you and the people who share it with you. Nothing affects us on a pure, almost kinetic, instinctual level like sports: When your team wins you are happy, and when it loses you are sad, and having something as binary and clear as that makes sports, to the people who love them, almost otherwordly important. To win a title is the apex of sports happiness. When your team wins a title, it is a straight shot of joy straight to your heart.

After my beloved Cardinals won the 2011 World Series in the most thrilling fashion imaginable, I have never quite been the same. It was the absolute peak experience of being a sports fan: I’m pretty sure it can’t be topped. There’s no more striving and struggle, less angst: My team won, in the greatest way, and knowing that happened, and that I got to be there for it, makes me grateful and, yes, even a little satiated. Georgia fans are losing their minds this morning after their title. But trust me, Dawgs fans: The fun is just getting started. Your sports fan life … it is only now beginning.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.