Beer, Buds and Football: A Competition for the Ages

One day after the SEC Championship rolled in and out town, the city of Atlanta played host to Bud Light's Fan Camp where teams of four competed against each other for an expenses paid trip to Hawaii. With the hometown Falcons playing an away game, the competition gave people the chance to live out their own gridiron dreams with three of their closest (or most athletic) friends. 

At times the action looked exactly like something from a Bud Light commercial with footballs flying around knocking over random objects and even hitting some people in the head (there were paramedics on site just in case something really bad happened).

With cups of Bud Light taking the place of sports drinks, it's needless to say that whoever participated in the games were more than pumped.

Check out some of the photos we were able to score during our visit to Phillips Arena.

Precision Pass

This challenge initially asked contestants to throw a football and hit a target, all while holding a bottle of Bud Light. 

Some teams came out with the Brett Farve mentality of just throwing hard and hoping to hit something, while others had a more Aaron Rodgers type strategy of of spreading the wealth and racking up points along the way.

After allowing the teams to get some practice throws in before the actual competition began, one of the moving targets wound up getting broke and immobile, which actually worked in the favor of one team.

While the rest of the pack figured that trying to hit the still functional targets for more points was their best bet, one team chose to focus on the broken target and commenced to throw straight laser darts at the target...over and over and over and over again. Think Napolean Dynamite's older brother to the Nth degree.

Cannon Catch

In this challenge, competitors had to put on an oversized, inflatable Bud Light helmet and catch line drive footballs from a pitching machine. Looks easy and sounds even easier, but let us tell you from experience, it's no easy task.

What they don't tell you is that the helmet alters your vision so you can hardly see the ball when its coming at you Vick-like speeds. Sure you can see the ball when it gets spit out but before you know it it hitting you right in the face.

Click on the next slide for a quick example.

In the Face!

See what we mean?

Flag Frenzy Football

Hands down, this was the most intense challenge of the day. Especially because it was the only one that called for actual head-to-head physical combat. Here, players had to bounce around on medicine balls and catch velcro-taped footballs with a glove. The catch? You butt has to stay on the ball for every play or else it's void. 

Flag Frenzy Football: Revis vs. Fitzgerald

Like we said...things got pretty serious here.

Quick Kick

Pretty self-explanatory. Surprisingly, the majority of the competitors did exceptionally well in this challenge. All they had to do was kick a football through inflatable Bug Light uprights.

Judging from the way each team performed, a lot of them must have been kickers in high school.

No really, some of them were really good. Good enough that a few NFL teams might want to give them a call over the summer.

Blue Route Relay

With this challenge the players had to first, weave there way around tackling dummies. Then tip toe through a rope course. Push a punching bag. Run under a tent. Run up random blocks. Walk a high beam. And the dart back to the finish line. You're probably out of breath from just reading all of that. 

But, there was a catch.

You had to do all of that while carrying a tray of Bud Light bottles. If you dropped one you had to go back and get it. It was more hilarious than you can imagine.

Gaming Area

Beer and Madden? They could've stopped the competition right there. People would willingly sign up for Fan Camp off of that alone.

With this challenge the teams had to play against each other in a brief game of Madden 2012. Whether or not you knew how to play did not matter, you just had to get the job done if you planned on going to Hawaii.

As we said earlier, there's nothing quite like the face of a man who realizes that his woman can't catch a football. We take that back, the faces of a man who just lost to a woman in Madden and the face of a man watching his girl beat a man down in Madden are just as priceless.

Team Thunder Takes the Prize

This is a photo of Team Thunder after they won their trip to Hawaii. In addition to the trip, they also won tickets to the Falcons vs Jaguars game later this month (hey, it's free). 

They really deserved it too. This team actually shed blood to win it all. The guy in the red couldn't jump like he wanted to because he screwed up his knee during one of the challenges. If you look really close, you might be able to see his badge of courage and the blood streaming down his leg.

That's what you call hunger!