![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/lolflackonsfans.jpg\")
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For the vast majority of the game, his back was to the field, and he instead was facing his fellow attendees in the stands instead of watching the game transpiring on the actual field itself.\u00a0 Repeatedly, he would pace back and forth through the mostly-empty row of seats in which his own ticketed seat was located, and seek out fans wearing gear of the opposing team.\u00a0 Whenever he located one, he would either pantomime that he was watching them, make a throat-slashing gesture, puff out his Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt, or all of the above, among a few other taunting gestures, like the \u201closer\u201d L on the forehead gesture.<\/span><\/p>\n It did not matter if those he taunted were grown adults, or young children.\u00a0 If they were wearing the other teams\u2019 colors, they were fair game for taunting.\u00a0 A grown man, taunting young children, and essentially calling them losers.<\/span><\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t just an Atlanta Falcons fan; this was a typical Atlanta sports fan.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m not really a Falcons fan, nor am I really a fan of any NFL team anymore these days.\u00a0 The Michael Vick dog-killing scandal, the general nonchalance from the Falcons and the NFL in regards to it, Daniel Snyder ruining the Redskins on a yearly basis, and just the general fact that the NFL is so fervently crammed down our throats; I\u2019ve just simply gotten sick of the NFL\u00a0 in general.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the circumstances were favorable, and I enjoy good company, so I went to the Redskins vs. Falcons game this past Sunday.\u00a0 It turned out to be a very exciting game, with a controversial finish that could really only be summed up with players and coaches that didn\u2019t want to play overtime, and we got to sit with Kirk Cousins\u2019 family, so it was a fun experience as a whole, but I walked away with the impetus of this post in my head afterward.<\/span><\/p>\n But I am both a person who enjoys sports and watching people, so I think I\u2019m not really out of the ballpark to say that I think I know a thing or two about the typical Atlanta sports fan.<\/span><\/p>\n The truth of the matter is that Atlanta sports fans aren\u2019t necessarily bad ones; the vast majority of them are undoubtedly fairweathered, and will completely vanish when a team is not popular or doing well, but when they do show up, they\u2019re generally what teams want to see in fans in the stands \u2013 people wearing team colors, buying their shit, and cheering when they\u2019re supposed to cheer.\u00a0\u00a0 Some, obviously more fervent and enthusiastic than others, but when they day is over, as long as the tickets have been sold, the teams are satisfied with the dollar bills rolling in.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the bottom line is that Atlanta sports fans are fans that are pretty much lifeless without antagonists.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s the case of the professional athlete that\u2019s generally unpopular or reviled amongst fansbases outside of their own, but in the case of the aforementioned impetus of this post, it\u2019s when fans of the opposition show up that brings the Atlanta sports fans to life.<\/span><\/p>\n Fans of Atlanta sports are tepid at best, until fans of the opposition show up to support their visiting teams.\u00a0 Then, Atlanta sports fans wake up, as it\u2019s more important to them to show up opposing fans than to actually root for their team from the onset.<\/span><\/p>\n I admit that I\u2019m not writing this as well as I had thought it would be in my head, and that I feel like I\u2019m struggling this morning to put my thoughts into words as well as I\u2019d hoped to be doing, so let\u2019s just simplify things, and go with examples.<\/span><\/p>\n The guy at the Falcons game, who spent the entire game taunting Redskins fans, would have absolutely no point in his entire life if there were no Redskins fans in attendance.\u00a0 If there were no Redskins fans to taunt, he would actually have to sit down and watch the game, because there would be no point to his grandstanding and hey-hey-look-at-me behavior, as everyone\u2019s already there to cheer for the home team.\u00a0 He might not even have been at the game, and would have been miserably watching the game at home, quietly, if he were even watching the game at all in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n The thing about Falcons games is that there\u2019s a guy like this guy in pretty much every single section of the Georgia Dome.\u00a0 Once, I was at a Jets\/Falcons game, and there was this particular Atlanta fan who marched around taunting everyone wearing a Jets jersey; eventually he zeroed in on one guy wearing a Chad Pennington jersey, and decided to repeatedly taunt him about how he was going to go over there and pee on him.<\/span><\/p>\n Whenever the Braves host a team that has a notoriously well-traveling fanbase, such as the Cardinals or an AL squad like the Yankees, the attendance will undoubtedly be good for all the games; but it\u2019s not necessarily that Braves fans want to see strong competition, it\u2019s mostly due to the fact that Atlanta fans feel the innate necessity to defend their home territory from invading visitors.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s surprisingly difficult for me to get to the point here, but the fact of the matter is that Atlanta fans don\u2019t often enough cheer for their teams because they want to cheer for them, they cheer for them at their best when there are visitors present to be shown up.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never heard Turner Field at its loudest until the Yankees came to town, and the locals and their misguided prejudice against visiting New Yorkers would cheer as if their lives depended on it for the littlest things, like a simple flyball putout, or a routine grounder.\u00a0 Any time any sort of Yankee section managed to become audible in support of their players, the ensuing boos from Atlanta fans were quick to follow in order to drown them out as effectively as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll wrap this up, because I think I\u2019m just repeating myself with different words thrice over now, but there\u2019s a good chance that this kind of behavior isn\u2019t limited to just Atlanta, but I don\u2019t think that I have enough experience in other places to be able to make that call.\u00a0 Either way, I find it a little deplorable that there are so many fans that don\u2019t really demonstrate true support until there\u2019s tangible opposition, to which then I question the legitimacy of it if it only shows up when put into question.<\/span><\/p>\n Either way, in the end it proves the importance of antagonists when it comes to sports fans, especially in the case of Atlanta; without perceived invading visitors to show up, Atlanta fans have zero reason to show up to any game.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the vast majority of the game, his back was to the field, and he instead was facing his fellow attendees in the stands instead of watching the game transpiring on the actual field itself.\u00a0 Repeatedly, he would pace back and forth through the mostly-empty row of seats in which his own ticketed seat was … Continue reading Atlanta sports fans and the importance of antagonists<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,106,83,15,143,58],"class_list":["post-38032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-football","tag-observations","tag-og","tag-ohatlanta","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38034,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032\/revisions\/38034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}