Atlanta IS The Worst Sports City

I have suffered enough. I have watched my favorite cities teams lose just one too many times. I have suffered watching what is inevitable--that our team would fail, no matter what. I have watched Boston become the best sports city after years of being in the doldrums to the point that I am ready to place a curse on Sam Cassell and David Ortiz. I have watched bad owners screw my teams into the abyss and along with it any reasonable hometown fan base. I have seen it from a distance and also close up. Both viewpoints are equally disturbing. I now have no expectation that my teams will win. I will watch a game now with no emotion except disgust and resignation. Disgust that the team has no chance at winning on a consistent basis, has a terrible coach or GM, and an ownership group that has no interest in winning. Resignation that it is certain that my team will lose and will continue to lose until we all fall off Vanderbilt's basketball court into an alternate universe.

I want to make the case that now Atlanta is the worst sports city in America.

Tonight I endure the horror of the Hawks losing to the Bobcats--again. The Bobcats are truly terrible. They do not have a real team and if they were in the Western Conference they would be relegated to the WNBA. They are in the Eastern Conference which gives anyone a chance to get into the play-offs no matter how bad your team is. I have rested on the knowledge that the Hawks were at least better than one team in the conference. That team until tonight was Charlotte. Now maybe I could say that the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks are worse than the Hawks--but not by much. The Hawks lost their fourth straight tonight because they could not play consistent defense and while on offense they all stand around watching Joe Johnson trying to carry them onto Omaha Beach like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan while all hell in raining down from the sky. Joe Johnson is a solid player and the only one on the Hawks squad, but he can't carry a team to the promised land. He is not Kobe or King James. He is Joe Johnson--no more, no less. The Hawks actually made a move at a trade deadline by picking up an aging Mike Bibby. The Hawks have gone 3-8 since the acquisition. The Bibby move was supposed to help the Hawks make a play-off push in a bad conference. At the time of the trade, the Hawks were in a play-off spot. Now they are now closer to the Bobcats than they are a play-off slot. This is because Bibby is actually washed up. He has no interest in playing in Atlanta. Who would? The owners don't care about the team. They do not even live in Atlanta. They live closer to Washington D.C. than to Atlanta. They are watching only the balance sheet and fighting each other for control of the team. I am still not sure who is running the team. The current GM, Billy Knight has the reputation as one of the worst GMs in the league. This past week he tried to get Coach Woodson fired. I have personally wanted Woodson fired since his first game coaching in the league. The owners refused. This is the shape of the Hawks. A team that is more like a bad chemistry experiment in high school that involves slicing the atom without protective goggles. The players have given up. The coach has given up. As a fan, I am not allowed to give up. I will not give up--but in the meantime I am preparing myself for the Hawks to move to Kansas City.

Another team that illustrates my point that Atlanta is one of the worst sports cities is the Falcons. As we go into the spring of our baseball discontent, the Falcons starting quarterback and face of the city in 2006 in Michael Vick is in federal prison. Vick (Ron Mexico) is in the fed pen for getting his groove on watching and gambling on dogs killing each other in small houses painted all black. Ron Mexico pleaded guilty to federal charges instead of dragging out a melodramatic and devastating trial. The result is that he will be in federal prison until next January. The Falcons coach at the start of the season, Bobby Petrino, left with four games left on the schedule in order to get recruiting violations in Arkansas. Regardless of the cap space of the team, no one wants to sign for them. That is except for a career back-up to LT in San Diego deciding that he needed to finally become a starter. Mike Turner has spent years getting LT's scraps in San Diego. He decided that he wanted to be the starter. So he shows up in Atlanta. Of course, Atlanta. Only in Atlanta would this signing be considered exciting or promising. Why? Because no one wants to sign for the Falcons. Why? The team is a sinking ship. The team has very little talent. The talent that is on the team has lost faith in coaches and ownership so much so that they simply don't care anymore--about anything. The owner of the Falcons looks like a gangster crossed with a used car salesman. He has absolutely no clue on how to run a NFL franchise. The Falcons would be better off run by a US Congressman that has been there for twenty years. A twenty year vet of Congress would be so unethical that they would do anything to win. He would make Coach Hoodie and the Evil Empire look like Jimmy Carter. It would be wonderful if this would happen. The money that would be spent and not counted against the cap. The hookers and blow off their asses in the locker room will be aplenty. The Falcons would be the best team in the league in three years and then eventually would fall apart when one of the hookers was killed in a bathroom stall. The Falcons are simply a grease fire. No talent at any level of the organization and no prospect of any talent on the way.

The Thrashers have also fallen apart. The current coach and GM has no clue what he is doing. The team can not stop anyone from scoring in the clutch. The team has lost so many opportunities to win games that each game requires each fan in attendance to have a note from their doctor that they can handle the heartache. The Thrashers have only one scoring threat and his name is Illya. No one should be playing hockey at a professional level with that name. They sent off another scoring threat to Pittsburgh for players who are not ready for starring roles in the NHL right at the deadline. Since the deadline, the players have stopped listening to their coaches and have tanked the season.

The Braves appear to be the only ray of hope. However, this is an illusion bordering on a delusion. There has been very little change on the roster since the end of last year. Andruw Jones is gone now and probably at the right time since his batting average spent the majority of the season under .200. He was replaced by Mark Kotsay who will not be able to hit NL pitching consistently. The Braves have Tom Glavine back, but what is the point now? Glavine is no longer effective on a consistent basis. If he was, he would still be playing for the Mets. Instead he is rotting in a starting rotation of aging vets and players coming back from major injuries. When one of your starting pitchers that you are counting on for your team's success or failure is coming off a major injury that has put them out for several years you are in deep trouble. The team has old talent--not new or young talent. A team relying on old talent (such as the Yankees and the Red Sox) is playing with a loaded AK-47. Bobby Cox's liver is probably close to failing after years of drinking during games. The team's "new" ownership has no interest in winning either and are unwilling to spend any money in order to win. Thus, the team will continuously have very little talent to work with and remain around .500 for the next two decades. However, the Braves were the only team to give the city of Atlanta a championship--13 years ago. There are none on the horizon.

Atlanta's teams are suffering from chronic apathy amongst the players, coaches, and owners. Atlanta sports fans are also suffering from chronic apathy as signified by their lack of attendance at games. One title thirteen years ago along with years of disgrace and embarrassment (for the exception of the Braves play-off years that mostly ended in bitter disappointment) makes Atlanta truly cursed as a sports city. There is very little hope now in Atlanta for it's sports teams. Sadly, this is nothing new.

To get a nice picture of the current state of Atlanta sports you can go to this blog.