Rise up, Atlanta, and summon some sympathy for those poor old Green Bay Packers fans.
Their team is a five point ‘dog going into Sunday’s NFC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome. Meanwhile, temperatures in their endless winter patch of Wisconsin have hovered in the low to mid 30s for much of the week.
So imagine them stepping off the plane at Hartsfield-Jackson this weekend and into our balmy Atlanta embrace, only to discover that the reason it's so freakishly hot here right now has nothing to with global warming and everything to do with a fever of epidemic proportions that's gripping Atlanta: Falcons Fever.
And resistance is futile.
“How can you avoid it? You can’t,” Sherman Poythress, a Fulton County Superior Court deputy clerk who’d pulled on his Michael Vick Falcons jersey for a downtown pep rally Friday morning, asked and answered his own question. “But … why would you want to?”
Why, indeed? Fueled by a somewhat unprecedented metro-wide blend of hope and cockiness that’s nearly as potent as the Falcons NFL-leading offense, this fever is more than the usual “take two aspirins and call sports talk radio in the morning” post-season affliction. And it couldn’t have come along at a better time than now, when even the inauguration of a new president can’t unite all Atlantans in the way that a long Matty Ice-to-Julio Jones scoring bomb can.
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“When we rise up from every zone and every home, we’ll be able to raise our hands and sing together,” said devout Falcons fan (and SCLC board member) Jeremy Ponds as he exhorted Friday’s diverse Falcons Rise Up rally crowd at the Fulton County Government Center. ‘Thank God almighty, we A-T-L-ians are champions at last!’”
Whew. And that’s just one of the milder (cough, cough!) Falcons Fever symptoms seen here over the last few days. Here are a few more: A popular Atlanta restaurant had to publicly apologize for agreeing to host a Packers rally ( “offering aid and comfort to the enemy,” one aggrieved radio caller complained). Three rabid Falcons fans in Nova Scotia, Canada, of all places, launched a desperate GoFundMe campaign to try and get here by Sunday. And step away from the smoked Gouda, people! A weekend-long ban on cheese, Wisconsin’s signature product, was forcefully proclaimed by an elected official.
Credit: David Barnes
Credit: David Barnes
“It’s unusual to say the least,” Fulton County Commission chairman John Eaves (not the cheese ban-ner) said with a chuckle about the feverish behavior. “It’s not comparable to the reaction at any previous time I can remember here.”
Eaves spoke as both a Falcons Fever sufferer and a carrier. After all, it was the sometimes divided commission of four Democrats and three Republicans he leads that came together on Wednesday to unanimously issue a proclamation celebrating the Falcons's success and to declare it "Atlanta Falcons Rise Up Day."
Then there was his “friendly” wager over Sunday’s game with his counterpart in Brown County, Wisconsin. As well as Friday morning’s pep rally, where the hundreds of attendees included guys in Falcons-inspired, red-and-black capes and Fauxhawks and Falcons’ “alumni” cheerleaders dating as far back as the 1960s. (They still had some serious moves).
“I’m auditioning to be a cheerleader,” Eaves jokingly acknowledged before turning his attention to the serious question of why this team and its postseason run have so enjoyably infected the city’s collective bloodstream. “It’s putting almost a storybook ending on things, where you have the final game ever at the Dome and a victory that takes the team to the Super Bowl.”
Yep, talk about your irony. Falcons Fever hits and suddenly, our hearts are all aflutter again for the aging Georgia Dome. Long after we were supposed to have kicked her to the curb in favor of the sleeker, sexier Mercedes-Benz Stadium going up next door, we’re all wishing we had $777 (the average price for the only tickets available on the secondary market to Sunday’s sold-out game) to spend just a few more hours in the company of our darling Dome.
"A little too rich for my blood," sighed Fernando Donaldson, a DeKalb County fan who'd been to two games this year. He knows a number of Falcons fans have only recently jumped on the bandwagon. But, he shrugged, "I'm just glad there is a bandwagon finally for everyone to jump on."
Meanwhile, if not the Dome, then where’s a delirious Falcons fan to go to watch Sunday’s game? To local watering holes, obviously, which are bracing themselves for the onslaught.
At Crossroads Bar and Grille, located a little over a mile (as the perfect Matt Ryan spiral pass flies) from the Falcons team headquarters in Flowery Branch, the regulars know to show up even earlier than usual Sunday, said manager Corey Foster, who was fretting over coming up with a red-and-black colored cocktail in time. At Fado in Midtown, where they’ve watched the fans’ passion reading rise right along with team’s won-loss record, they’re expecting to be full an hour before Sunday’s 3:05 p.m. kickoff.
Full, as in literally having to close Fado’s front door on Peachtree Street and not let anyone else in. Last week’s close-the-door moment came later, about 15 to 20 minutes into the Falcons-Seahawks playoff game, said manager Jenny Goodwin. Should any Packers fans make it inside this Sunday, Goodwin expects everyone to treat them “fairly.” But just in case: “We kind of section them off in their own area.”
You simply can't be too careful right now. Already this week, Falcons Fever has spiked in unpredictable fashion a couple of times. At Wednesday's proclamation ceremony, Fulton County commissioner Bob Ellis forcefully declared, "This is also a No Cheese weekend!" Yet even more serious, potentially, than the prospect of a brie-free 48 hours, was the outrage that greeted Tuesday's announcement of a free Packers pep rally Saturday at Park Tavern.
“Hope your place burns to the ground,” someone wrote them on Facebook.
“This is Atlanta. Participate or go back home!” growled a caller to WSB radio’s “The Mark Arum Show.”
By Wednesday, the restaurant that overlooks Piedmont Park had taken to Facebook to apologize and loudly proclaim, “We are and have always been Falcons fans and are rooting for them to make it to the Super Bowl (AND WIN!).”
Falcons Fever.
Resistance is futile.
