Game of Thrones characters as College Football programs and figures
Daenerys Targaryen
Long thought to be the last member of a great, but fallen dynasty, Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen has been on a quest to take back the Iron Throne that was forcefully ripped from her family.
We now know that she isn’t the last dragon, a fact that will surely complicate her new-found romantic relationship with Jon Snow. The Mother of Dragons feels like the Iron Throne is her birthright, and she’s hell-bent on retrieving it.
She’s made plenty of mistakes along the way, and suffered bitter defeats. She’s lost several close to her. She always seems to have her people’s best interest at heart, though the ruthless side of her has come out at times when she has a point to prove.
Daenerys reminds me of Jalen Hurts. Bear with me because this one will take some explaining.
Hurts was a two-year starter at Alabama, a proud program similar to the Targaryen name. Hurts won a national championship, but he was benched in that game for Tua Tagovailoa, a freshman wunderkind who rescued the Crimson Tide in the second half of the title game against Georgia.
Hurts, like Daenerys, has been forced to abandon his home in Tuscaloosa, fleeing west to Norman to pilot Oklahoma’s offense in 2019. Revenge could be the fuel for both, as they both have something to prove.
The dynamic between Daenerys and Jon Snow obviously parallels Hurts’s relationship with Tagovailoa. They’re clearly close, but they might have to go through each other to reach their ultimate goal.
The parallels get even clearer when you imagine Daenerys’s daring rescue of Jon beyond the wall late in Season 7 is strikingly similar to Hurts rescuing Tagovailoa and Alabama in the SEC Championship Game last year. Both were surely defeated, until Daenerys flew her dragons in against the Night King’s army and Hurts stepped off the bench and engineered a pair of touchdown drives to lift the Crimson Tide over the Bulldogs.
Hurts and Oklahoma are a strong contender to conquer college football in 2019, and Daenerys might also take her place on the throne that has eluded her throughout the series.