Giddy Atlantans at Wits’ End Over Their Falcons

Wendy Bowman-Littler’s voice trembles. Her pulse pounds and her heart flutters. She has all the symptoms of a woman in love, and indeed she is, though not only with her husband.

She’s ga-ga for 61 men in Miami.

With her eternally feckless Atlanta Falcons somehow playing Sunday in Super Bowl XXXIII, Bowman-Littler and tens of thousands like her have found themselves cow-eyed, weak-kneed, moonstruck. Yes, they know that the Falcons’ opponent, the Denver Broncos, are beloved in their hometown too. But Denver is making its sixth trip to the Super Bowl, while the Falcons are that rare entry in the postseason pageant: Super Bowl virgins.

So you’ll forgive first-timers like Bowman-Littler and her fellow Atlanta fans if they seem somewhat self-involved, if their lips quiver and their eyes actually fill with tears at the mention of their “Dirty Birds.” You’ll understand if everyone here is wearing black (the team’s dominant color), and some are wearing beaks and hundreds are literally dancing in the streets, doing a sidestep, crow-hop, buck-and-wing kind of jig called the Dirty Bird.

“People in Atlanta just want something to rally around,” says Bowman-Littler, a 34-year-old season-ticket holder and writer for the Atlanta Business Chronicle. “They want to come together and support something.”

In fact, many Atlantans say the Falcons have done more than win games and hearts this season. They’ve helped the city get past a spate of civic and athletic jolts, a series of random bombings, a baseball team that flops every October, and a sense of failed expectations about the 1996 Olympic Games, which now seem to be the target of a widening bribery investigation.

Steady Diet of Disappointment

After a steady diet of such disaster and disappointment, Atlanta has dared to lift its head again, cautiously opened its heart once more to hope, thanks to a lowly football team with a 33-year streak of futility, reborn this year under a coach who got off his deathbed to lead them.

“Remember the first time you fell in love?” said radio personality Dave Stone. “That’s how the city of Atlanta feels about the Falcons.”

No one accused him of overdoing it.

“It’s just like when I laid eyes on” her husband, concurs Debra Lee, a schoolteacher. “Ecstasy.”

Every great love has a pivotal moment, when caution yields and passion takes the lead. For Falcons fans that moment was Jan. 17, when the team went to Minnesota and upset the heavily favored Vikings in the NFC Championship Game. As the battle raged into overtime, life in Atlanta ground to a halt. Malls emptied, stores cleared out and traffic thinned to a trickle on the L.A.-like freeway system. When Vikings kicker Gary Anderson muffed a chance to beat Atlanta, rebel yells of relief could be heard from Stone Mountain to Jonesboro. When Falcons kicker Morten Andersen booted the winning field goal from almost the same spot, Atlanta came undone.

Mike Arnold, a 26-year-old defense lawyer, was crouched like a defensive lineman before his TV, in the three-point stance he typically assumes for extra tense Falcons contests. As the ball wobbled through the uprights, Arnold leaped to his feet and temporarily lost control of his machismo.

“I don’t hug other guys very often,” he says slowly, carefully, “but all my roommates and I embraced and we were shedding tears of joy, I’m not ashamed to say it.”

Raymond White, a security officer, high-stepped around his house with his wife and some of the neighbors. “I didn’t think I’d have a house left after all the stomping,” he says. “It gave you such a rush. You didn’t need no alcohol, you were in such a daze.”

About 30,000 feet above the Earth, on a Delta airliner out of Atlanta, the pilot announced that the Falcons had done the impossible, and the passengers let out a whoop that nearly knocked over the drink cart, says Tiffany Fallon, a Falcons cheerleader and Delta flight attendant.

Hours after the game, Arnold and Bowman-Littler and about 6,000 more fans journeyed north to Suwanee, site of Falcons headquarters, to welcome the team home. “That little town was busting at the seams,” Bowman-Littler says. “There were more cops than I’ve ever seen in my life, more people than I’ve ever seen at the games.”

Ah, the games. A sore point among die-hard Falcons fans. Historically, if you wanted to be alone with your thoughts on a Sunday afternoon, you went to the Georgia Dome during a Falcons home game. Unlike the Broncos, who’ve been blessed with good teams and great fans, the Falcons have been cursed with ugly teams and the attendant lack of attendance.

20,000 Fans Fill Olympic Park

But those days may be over, if a recent rally north of downtown was any sign. A contest was held to determine the most devoted fan in the city, and one woman showed the crowd of hundreds her bare backside, which had recently been tattooed with a black Falcons wing. She took second place. The winners were young men who painted their truck Bronco blue and orange, then beat it to a rusty pulp with baseball bats.

On a fan Web site, one Atlantan even suggested that God loves the Falcons, noting the recurrence of the Biblical number 33: The team is 33 years old, its quarterback is 33 years old, and this is the 33rd Super Bowl.

Last Sunday, 20,000 fans gathered in Centennial Olympic Park to see the team off to Miami. It was the largest crowd to gather in the park since the Olympics, when a bomb killed one person and injured 100. Win or lose today, many said, the Falcons have already scored a moral victory, by transforming the seldom-used park.

“It’s inspirational,” says Basil Lee. “After the bombing, here we are, back in Centennial Park--for a positive thing.”

Some of the inspiration fans derive from the Falcons stems from their falconer, Georgia-born Dan Reeves, the head coach who underwent heart surgery last month, then returned to the team three weeks later, wan but determined to win. With his stressed-out grimace, his backwoods drawl, which is thicker than homemade peach preserves, and his post-surgery news conference at which he wept like a child while thanking fans for their support, it would be hard to find a Falcon the city is more anxious to take under its wing.

“The whole town is enjoying this coach,” White says. “People can relate to death and hurt. This is what the team fed off.”

Maybe the purest expression of love between the Falcons and their followers is the team’s signature celebratory dance, the Dirty Bird, which players and fans will perform at the drop of a helmet. (One preacher startled worshipers two Sundays ago by breaking into the Dirty Bird during his sermon.) Invented by Falcons tight end O.J. Santiago, the dance is bizarre for many reasons, but chiefly because it makes any adult who does it look drunk.

Still, no matter how awkward, Mayor Bill Campbell vows to perform the Dirty Bird in public if the Falcons actually prevail. And should they lose, as Las Vegas expects them to do?

“If they lose it’s still good,” White says. “We’ll be back next year.”

Which would be fitting, and terrifying, considering the site of next year’s Super Bowl:

Atlanta.

Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.