In the 18 years since the Atlanta Falcons lost Super Bowl XXXIII back in 1999, a lot has changed.
The kids who were born around (or because of) that first one? They're in college now.
»Flashback: The last time the Falcons went to the Super Bowl
Let's reflect back.
In 1999, we partied like it was 1999.
The year was 1999. Prince had foretold of a party. And by party, he must have meant "an endless game of Snake on that Nokia cell phone." Yeah. It was a party all right.
Atlanta was a baseball city then, and the 1999 Braves were in the midst of that 14 division title run. The 1999 season was the one John Rocker Kenny-Powered his way into infamy. People in New York threw batteries at him on his way to the mound in the NLCS, which didn't stop him. The Braves made the World Series before getting wholly trounced by the New York Yankees.
Hush that fuss.
Credit: Kevin Winter
Credit: Kevin Winter
Back home, Andre 3000 and Big Boi were the biggest stars in the city on the strength of "Aquemini" and the impending global reach they would find with "Stankonia." There were no bombs over Baghdad for them to write about at the time; Bill Clinton was in office before one Bush, and after the other. Things were pretty much SpottieOttieDopalicious around the A.
We had our VHS tapes on loan from Blockbuster, our house phones corded up and ready to roll, and our directions printed out on A4 paper. On the FM radio (boombox), V103 had "Watch for the Hook" by Cool Breeze on repeat. It featured Outkast, Goodie Mob and someone named Witchdoctor. Look at all those guys...the future was ahead of us.
Sports imitates life.
Fun fact: Cool Breeze coined the phrase "dirty South." Dirty South, of course, provided the "dirty," for our Dirty Birds.
»The Dirty Bird: How to do the Atlanta Falcons touchdown dance
The 1999 Atlanta Falcons were in that same vein. It's no accident we were “dirty.” The team was young, brash and filled with overachievers bringing a certain hip-hop swag that you just didn't get enough of in the 1990s on the football field.
The iconic dance doubled down on it all, and Jamal Anderson's downhill freight train rumbled us all the way to the Super Bowl. Back then, Anderson was still allowed at all metro Atlanta QuikTrips, and Denver Broncos General Manager John Elway was still a quarterback. A great one. The Broncos, like the Yankees later that year in baseball, beat Atlanta down. It was not our time, 1999.
Hindsight, foresight
In retrospect, we were just happy to be there. We weren't this Atlanta then anyway.
Arthur Blank was just a really rich businessman. Mike Vick was taking his first snaps at Virginia Tech, and the city of Atlanta was about to get 2 million more people. The Atlanta skyline then, a little thin. Cam Newton was nine, the Carolina Panthers had just turned 4, and Tom Brady was an intern at Merrill Lynch.
Here's an observation: We've matured since then. Just look at Matt Ryan's slow, steady growth over the years. This year, even Brett Favre thinks he's your MVP. Less new kid on the block (or NKOTB, if you will) and more ascendant great. Atlanta in 2017 finds that old Midtown and Downtown skyline connected now; one unbroken stretch of iconic steel riding up a Peachtree Road spine; 3.8 million of us then, 6 million today.
For perspective on how much the narrative has changed since we were Dirty Birds, stop to realize just how far we have come. Yet, people keep trying to act like the mere thought of Atlanta as a sports city gives them acid reflux. See this from Boston Globe writer Dan Shaugnessy or anything Mike Wilbon on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" says about us.
Things are different now.
Atlanta, our time is now; in Castleberry Hill, and on Edgewood Avenue, and in East Atlanta Village (where rock and roll is not dead), and in Grant Park, and Candler Park and Piedmont Park. In Cabbagetown, and at 10th and Juniper, and on the Westside. In Flowery Branch, and for sure in the Old Fourth Ward.
We are a better city today than in 1999 by any measure.
Where once Atlanta was more tossed salad than melting pot, today we're nacho-cheese-melty.
Down the street from where we'll keep that Lombardi trophy, Outkast played a reunion show there a couple years back at the Centennial Olympic Park. You've never seen so many ATLiens. We still gather there, dating back to 1996 before the Dirty Birds. We go to Centennial Olympic Park for shows and togetherness. For community. To be from Atlanta, there in that park where the nails from a domestic terrorist's bomb are still embedded grotesquely as a reminder that we are never finished in finding that united state.
Anyone who thinks Atlanta doesn't matter should pay a visit to the Ebenezer Baptist Church sometime.
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Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
In football, we're pretty legit, too. Matt Ryan just put together one of the best statistical seasons any QB has ever had. And they'll yawn when they give him the MVP trophy. And again when we hoist Lombardi. And they won't ever even know about the wild trap music structure fire that'll thump all night on Edgewood, because they think of us from 1999; not realizing we are no longer wide-eyed Dirty Birds, and that no one says Hotlanta anymore.
It's easy enough to forget, as we go about our business, that Atlanta is a city built on impossible strength. On shoulders strong enough to win the long game against all odds. And people like that, cities like that, football teams like that every once in awhile, when you don't see 'em coming − they rise up.
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