I Married a Sports Franchise

The very first time I looked down from a seat in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, I knew I was hooked. Not on that old dishpan of an arena, mind you, but the team thereon. I went because I had won a free ticket from a local radio station. By the time of the final whistle, it had become something else entirely.

The Falcons had put Atlanta on the NFL map just a few years before but until this particular day, they hadn't all told won but a handful of games. Oh yes, winning is definitely a good thing. But it was not then, nor is it now the single defining criteria for fanship.

There is something that goes deeper than the passing fancy or simple appreciation for regularly placed winning seasons. What is in play here is more closely akin to a love affair, where despite even your own best efforts to break away, the heart remains true through thick and thin.

And through the years since, it has.

Of course, not everyone sees it like this. Fair-weather fans will sprout like azaleas in the springtime and grow those car-window pennants like kudzu over an old barn. If you need an example, just look at the Michael Vick years.

His arrival brought them out in record numbers but then when he fell from grace (and into a federal jail cell), it all dried up faster than Lake Lanier.

By the end of that day so long ago, the Atlanta Falcons had won one of the only two games they would win that year. As for me? I hopped a Greyhound for the ride back home, holding my ticket stub like it was a treasure.

A few weeks later, my home was burglarized. Besides losing a rather valuable coin collection, my souvenir was lost too because I had stashed it in with a number of old pennies that were worth far more than their face value.

I doubt that the thief had any idea of what those old coins were worth to a collector... or how much I would have paid to have that game stub back again.