“Gloom, despair, and agony on me

Deep, dark depression, excessive misery

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all

Gloom, despair and agony on me.” — Hee Haw

If there is one thing for sure in my life it is that as a sports fan I am used to a certain amount of misery.

See, as someone who has always tried to follow most of the teams associated with the state of Georgia throughout my life, it just seems that gloom, despair and agony are individually and collectively part of the equation.

Y’all know it has been many years since I’ve followed professional sports closely at all. In fact, before this Super Bowl, I think the last professional sports event I watched was Michael Jordan’s last game with the Chicago Bulls. I haven’t followed the Braves. I haven’t followed the Falcons. I haven’t followed the Hawks.

I have, however, followed the Georgia Bulldogs quite closely. And when they aren’t playing Georgia, I keep a supportive eye on Georgia Tech (I know that’s blasphemy among some of the old guard UGA folks, but I’d rather see a Georgia-based team win than some team from New Jersey … just saying).

You add all of the sports teams from the Peach State into one wad and you end up with a huge pile of suffering. It just is what it is. Fans of every one of those teams have become quite used to getting backhanded across the face and saying ‘thank you, sir, may I please have another?’

So, last Sunday I watched the Super Bowl. It was the first professional sports event I have watched in 20 or so years. Before I ever sat down in front of the television, I thought to myself “this may be a huge mistake.” I just had a gut feeling something was going to go very, very wrong before all was said and done. Call it “conditioning.”

After all, every time I have watched a Georgia team in the last near 30 years or more in a huge game the result has always or almost always ended and a severe degree of disappointment — the only possible exception being the 1995 World Series when the Braves defeated the Indians.

In spite of my gut feeling, which I attributed more to indigestion than intuition, I planted myself to watch this game everyone in our state has anticipated for a generation.

After a cool rendition of “America the Beautiful” by the Schuyler Sisters from the hit Broadway musical ‘Hamilton’ and a great a capella national anthem from Lee County’s Luke Bryan, I was pleasantly, shockingly surprised by how the entire affair started off. The Falcons came out like a house on fire and led the game 21-3 at halftime. Then in the third quarter, they added on to that and led by a seemingly insurmountable 28-3 score. 

Keeping up with everyone’s reactions on social media, Falcon fans were giddy, if not completely baffled, with the situation. Nobody saw THIS coming. Never before in the history of the Super Bowl had any team ever had such a lead and lost the game. Never, ever. The Falcons owner, Arthur Blank, was even on the sidelines ready to do a victory dance with the team. It was almost too good to be true.

Alas, there’s that word — almost.

No sooner did everyone in our state start actually believing did the light at the end of the tunnel morph into a huge, flying freight train with explosives attached to every car. Just about anything that could go wrong did, and inexplicably yet almost predictably the Falcons lost the game — in overtime, no less.

Oddly enough, the anticipated howl of fan anguish never really materialized. Oh sure, nobody could quite believe the unprecedented collapse that unfolded right in front of their eyes in stunningly clear high definition — because actually, yes they could.

It has just become part of the mindset of us Peach State sports fans. If it’s not Georgia coming up five yards short of playing for (and probably winning) a national championship, it’s Georgia Tech’s quarterback throwing the ball out of bounds on a fourth down play to lose the game. If it’s not the Hawks just being the Hawks (as if most anyone really pays attention to them to begin with), it’s the Braves just being the Braves.

Yet no sooner had the last confetti cannon fired off in the Patriots postgame celebration were many of the of those fans already uttering those immortal words that have become a cornerstone of the Peach State sports fan vernacular:

“Just wait until next year.”

In the aftermath, a lot of fans were left shaking their heads, almost laughing at themselves for allowing themselves to actually believe — really believe — that this game, arguably the biggest game in the universe, was in their hip pocket, won, over and done. The city of Atlanta and our state as a whole just should’ve flat known better.

In fact, the sports world now has a new term for such an epic collapse — “Falconing.”

In reading all of the post-game gloom, despair, and agony posts from the fans, one fellow from Roswell summed it up best when he said and I quote:

“When I die, I want to have two Braves, two Falcons and two Georgia Bulldogs as my pallbearers — you know, just so they can all let me down one more time.”