ROUSES_SeptOct2019_Magazine

A GOOD RIVALRY IS SO MUCH BIGGER THAN A GAME. Perhaps most important, a strong rivalry between teams is good at getting the whole community riled up. And along with the trash talk, hollering and superstitions on both sides, there’s plenty of culture on display: Rivalry game day is, without a doubt, its own special kind of celebration. “Every year, bus caravans loaded with rowdy (and usually very inebriated) fans make the seven-hour trip between the two cities,” writes Len Pasquarelli for ESPN.com. “Unless you’ve attended a Falcons-Saints debauchery-filled afternoon, you'll just have to take my word for how much fun it really can be.” For the Saints and Falcons, it’s also a larger clash between the very character of two extremely different Southern cities. With over 5.9 million people, Metro Atlanta is filled with the kind of skyscrapers and traffic-snarling sprawl that mark it as sweepingly metropolitan. New Orleans, on the other hand, is smaller and funkier — content to do its own thing down along the Gulf. Game day between these two rivals isn’t just about what happens on the field — it’s a true grudge match for pride of place and local identity. Going into the 2019 season, the Saints and Falcons have clashed 100 times over the course of their respective careers, and have been pushing each other to grow, develop and achieve in ways that non- rivalry competitions just can’t. It’s not hard to imagine that, while in training sessions and practices, Saints players are fantasizing about picking off a pass from Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, and the Fal- cons defense is running drill after drill in hopes of sacking Drew Brees. The cities of New Orleans and Atlanta are assuredly gearing up, too — figuring out just how they’re going to clown around on one another in an innovative, memorable fashion this year as decades of history, rivalry and community pride come to a head. If they’re looking for top-notch inspiration to stoke the rivalry fires, I’d point fans on both sides to a 2013 commercial for a local New Orleans bank starring Saints Head Coach Sean Payton. In the ad, the coach appears to be dining out at a hoity-toity, white-table- cloth restaurant (in gameday attire, of course). After the waiter asks Payton what he’d like to eat, the camera zooms in on him running his finger over a list of NFL-inspired dishes — and finally landing on a particularly cheeky one. “I’ll have the roasted Falcon,” he deadpans to the waiter, then gives the camera a wry smirk. “ Home games: We park in the same place; we go in the same Dome gate; we go in as soon as the Dome opens. I have a Bloody Mary before the game starts (sometimes I don’t feel like drinking one but I have to), and my husband has to eat the same thing at every half-time ( even if he wants something else). My husband has worn the same shirt to the games for at least 15 years (he still gets compliments on it , plus he wears our dog’s “Saints” collar (from when he was a puppy) as a bracelet. And of course we sit in the same spots at home games and always have chili dogs. Guess A GOOD RIVALRY MAKES YOUR TEAM — AND FAN BASE — TOUGHER.

photo: New Orleans Saints

A GOOD RIVALRY HAS TWO WORTHY ADVERSARIES. While Atlanta and New Orleans football fans have been duking it out for decades, few people outside of the region noticed for most of the teams’ tenure because both franchises were, well, a little lacking in the wins department. “The Saints and the Falcons both were so bad for so long that I believe this is why their nasty rivalry never gets attention from the mainstream media,” writes Mike Kerns of Bleacher Report. “In fact, the futility was so bad that up until the Falcons’ Super Bowl run of 1998, both franchises had only managed to capture the division crown once each.” Since the late 1990s, though, the teams have not only started beating each other, but become powerhouses on a national scale. Atlanta has two conference championships to New Orleans’ one — but the Saints have a Super Bowl ring. New Orleans has seven division championships to Atlanta’s six — but the Falcons have the all-time win streak in their rivalry against the Saints (10 games between 1995 and1999). The two teams are so historically well- matched against one another that the all-time number of wins in the series is almost an even split between the two: 52 victories for the Falcons, and 48 for the Saints. Without a doubt, these two teams go tit for tat. A GOOD RIVALRY MEANS CELEBRATING THE OTHER TEAM’S DEFEATS AS MUCH AS YOUR OWN VICTORIES. Is a Falcons’ loss as satisfying as a Saints’ win for fans and vice versa? Not quite, but it’s pretty darn close. No recent incident captures this more vividly than the Saints fans’ glee — I mean, absolute giddiness — at the Falcons blowing a 28-3 lead against the New England Patriots in the 2017 Super Bowl. Memes about the implosion were created instantaneously and circu- lated like wildfire on social media. The Saints pep band worked a “28-3” formation into their on-field performances, as did the coach- shorts-wearing male dance troupe, the 610 Stompers. And the New Orleans-based company Dirty Coast attempted to buy a billboard outside of the Falcons’ new Atlanta stadium that trolled the team about their 28-3 loss. But the finest example of basking in your rival team’s failings (and never, ever letting them forget it) came when someone paid a pilot to fly above the Superdome carrying a banner proclaiming, “28-3 MERRY XMAS” during the first Saints-Falcons game following the Atlanta team’s Super Bowl disaster. Petty? Yes. Hilarious? Definitely, yes.

our home game rituals are a little strict….” - V. MEHRTENS ; MY SAINTS SUPERSTITION

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SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2019