NASCAR adds to busy sports weekend in Atlanta

One of Atlanta’s fullest sports weekends is here, so let the party begin at Mambi Bambiville.

By mid-week, the NASCAR race fans who twice a year raise a PVC-and-tarpaulin compound outside Atlanta Motor Speedway already had their three 10-by-20 shelters in place.

These 75 friends have given the ultimate tailgating set-up a most unusual name. The origin is complicated. Leave it at this: The fact that “Mambi Bambiville” tends to sound funnier and funnier the more you drink is not a coincidence.

One room is always the kitchen, with a full-sized refrigerator and makeshift sink. Another is the living room, complete with couch, stereo and satellite TV. The third is for when the party begins to overflow.

The last detail involved additional electronics. Saturday afternoon — right after a warm-up truck race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, as it turns out — both Georgia and Georgia Tech are playing football on TV. And there was only one flat screen on hand with kickoff approaching.

“That’s OK. One-Eyed Billy is bringing another TV,” Monticello’s Billy (two-eyed) Phillips said before any arguments could erupt.

It is definitely a two-TV week in town. Atlanta finds itself in a rare confluence of games and races, with NASCAR, college football and the Falcons all vying for attention.

Thrown into the mix is a little Yankee flatball — hockey’s Thrashers are surprisingly break-even early in their season — and this week’s return of the one Atlanta pro team with playoff cachet (oddly, the Hawks). Add it all together, and it can be argued that there is no better time to be a sports fan in Atlanta.

A little of the range of the local sports environment was on display over Jason Casey’s pickup truck. The Monroe County fan flew a Matt Kenseth flag this weekend at the Speedway, making clear his rooting interest in Sunday’s big NASCAR Sprint Cup race. And above that banner is one bearing a big Georgia Bulldog G. That pretty well defines his Saturday.

And in Mambi Bambiville’s determination to spit into the wind of all the day’s weighty issues is proof that sports can be nice little safe room.

“No talk about the economy. No politics,” Phillips said. “And at the end of Sunday, you say, ‘Oh, man, now I got to go back to the real world.’”

Keeping score in real life isn’t a whole lot of fun right now, not when every day of tracking the Dow is another bungee jump off a burning rope bridge.

In confounding times, there is a real need for a simple winner and loser with maybe a few completion percentages thrown in.

“Sports always has been an anchor for people, regardless of what all was going on in the world,” said Dave Czesniuk, director of operations at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sports and Society.

“Sports is a community uniter, a rallying point that different people of different backgrounds can gather around. Especially in times like these.”

Really, can you think of a better time to have such a rich menu of diversions in hand?

Earlier this month, Sporting News arrived at its annual ranking of American sports cities. Atlanta was 19th (Athens was ranked separately, at 51st). It finished behind such burgs as Phoenix/Tempe, Ariz. (6th), Nashville (14th) and Lawrence, Kan. (15th).

This city always has had a kind of an iffy reputation as a sports town, a place of lukewarm passion for whatever the game. But on weeks like this, on sheer volume, that argument springs a leak.

Especially this time of year, sport is intertwined with the rhythm of life in Atlanta.

April Bloomer, owner of Roswell’s Event Catering (Ivy Hall and two other facilities), keeps an SEC football schedule on her desk and can pretty much set her own schedule by it.

The heart, it seems, only has room for one great love at a time. And when it’s between a soul mate and southern college football, best not to force a choice.

“I could have stood outside and taken the highest bidder on Georgia’s bye weekend. Everyone wanted to get married then,” Bloomer said. She did eight weddings on that Saturday (Oct. 4). She feels lucky to have three planned for the Saturday of Georgia-Florida.

The massive Hampton track is planning to move its second race of 2009 up to Labor Day, and one of the many benefits, said general manager Ed Clark, “is that I can sit back and watch football in the Fall.”

“This is not the easiest place to promote,” Clark said of the Speedway. “There’s more competition from other sport events. There’s just generally so much more to do in Atlanta.

“There’s just a lot of action here. It’s a great place to be, especially now. I’m not sure [Atlanta] fans realize how good they have it.”

A week like this is a reminder that sports do matter here, that they are vibrant threads in a sprawling tapestry. And if the game also happens to be a temporary placebo for hard, confusing times, well, then, we say, bring on that sugar pill.