Today I will dig myself out of over a foot of snow and head to work. Later, there will likely be an accident of some sort that will require me to dig myself out of the snow and travel to said accident, trying to avoid becoming part of an accident myself. After the accident, I will go back to the office, where I will work until it is dark and cold and I have to dig myself out of the snow again.
I'm a guy who enjoys the hell out of his life, but that is just futile, man.
When you think about our lives as football fans, there's a very loosely strung parallel there. We love our teams, but we spend at least as much time digging ourselves out of the mess they leave us in as we do exalting in their triumphs. The Falcons in particular have given us many more snowstorms over the years than bright days, but yet we gather here to dissect their every move, forecast their every decision and hold our hands to the warm glow of the 2008 season. It's funny how seventeen games have turned many of us from dull-eyed pessimists to blind optimists.
A fan's attachment to their team of choice is a baffling, lifelong choice. If you're like me, you've never quite found the perfect answer when someone asks you why you stick with them, particularly if you raise questions about everything else in your life. Many of us who aren't overly loyal to our jobs, change cell phone carriers regularly and shift our life's very purpose to suit our weekly whims will die having spent decades cheering and snarling at our televisions on Sundays. I try to explain it to people who don't have a team or aren't sports fans and I constantly come up short.
So rather than spend yet another day harping on free agency when the Falcons are apparently content to let the market sort itself out, we're doing this. We're going to try to define what it is that keeps us Falcons fans going.
This isn't meant to evoke a discussion on how you became a Falcons fan in the first place--because we're already done that--but to see what favorite memory or enduring feature of the Falcons keeps your rooting interest intact. What is the very essence of your fandom?
Enjoy, folks.