The Win Column: Su casa es mi casa

Hey. Happy Friday.

Wanna talk about an old building in Spain?

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

It’s never hosted a Super Bowl, an SEC championship or a national title game. There are no car ads plastered on the side — and it’s not even a little bit pointy.

I suppose it’ll have to do.

The Falcons “home” stadium for Sunday’s melee in Madrid is known simply as the Bernabéu (ber-nah-BEH-oo.) Spanish soccer powerhouse Real Madrid — current roster: English star Jude Bellingham, French star Kylian Mbappé, Brazilian star Vinicius Junior — has played there since 1947.

The stadium was recently renovated (did you know you can do that without tearing them down?) and has hosted World Cup matches and lots of other big deal soccer-y stuff. Also Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

Who’s up for a few more facts?

Capacity: A little over 83,000.

Shape: Squarish Roomba with rounded edges and a sort of nose sticking out one end. There’s vent-y looking things all around the exterior, and the roof’s retractable.

Playing surface: Real-live grass with a touch of synthetic stuff mixed in. The whole thing is actually six separate panels that are moveable and, when no one’s playing, get lowered into a climate-controlled stadium basement for safe keeping. It’s wild, and it’s got the NFL’s attention.

• Naturally, our amigo Ken Sugiura wrote all about it.

History: The Bernabéu in Bernabéu Stadium is Santiago Bernabéu, a Real Madrid player turned club president. In the early 1940s he said to himself, “Hey, uh, the Spanish Civil War is over, we should build a bigger place to play soccer.” He said it to other people too, and they listened.

They eventually named it after him.

It’s been renovated a few times, with the most recent project wrapping up in late 2024. That one cost north of a billion euros. The New York Times called it “fun” and “futuristic.”

• Ken and Falcons beat reporter Daniel Flick got their own tour: “The premium seating, the multiple decks, the halo video board, the retractable roof and the metallic façade are all reminiscent of what a modern NFL stadium looks like,” Ken told me. “If I knew nothing about it and told me it was built in the last five years, I would believe it.”

Anyway … when Real Madrid isn’t busy winning one of its many many league and/or European titles, Bernabéu hosts other stuff.

It was home to the 1982 World Cup final, in which Italy beat West Germany (that’s the noncommunist one). And fans were surely just as excited last year, when the stadium hosted its first NFL game: a 16-13 overtime affair that — no joke — featured Tua Tagovailoa’s Miami Dolphins and Marcus Mariota’s Washington Commanders.

Less self-confident nations might’ve consider that an act of war.

The league was wise to send two of its most celebrated emissaries this time around.

📺 Watch Falcons-Bengals at 9:30 a.m. EST Sunday. NFL Network and Atlanta News First will air all the action.

🚨 FALCONS GIFT LINKS 🚨

I didn’t actually talk about the game at all, so all of these links are gift links. Don’t say I never did anything for ya.

• Dirty Birds Dispatch: Live from Madrid
• Cunningham: Falcons not using Bijan properly
• Pearce questionable to return this week

MORE GOOD STUFF TO KNOW

🔮 ICYMI: Michael Cunningham’s weekend predictions tackle the Falcons, Dawgs, Jackets and more.

🤞 It’s the final Friday of the high school football regular season, and Loren Maxwell figures about 32 Georgia teams are on the playoff bubble.

🧥 Former Falcons head man Dan Reeves is one of five coaches nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year. Bill Belichick, who was wrongfully but also pretty hilariously snubbed last time, also made the ballot.

• Reeves took the Broncos to three Super Bowls and lost ‘em all. Then he took the Falcons to the ‘ship in 1998 … and lost to the Broncos. Ain’t life funny?

⚾ Did you realize Matt Olson has never won a Silver Slugger award? Me either, but he and his 41 homers are finalists for the honor again this season. Winners announced Nov. 17.

• Also of interest: Pitchers the Braves could potentially trade for this offseason.

🏀 The Hawks held former BFF Trae Young to 18 points (and an icky plus-minus of -19) during Wednesday’s win over the Wizards. Methinks Young will aim a little higher tonight — when he plays his first game back at State Farm Arena. Tipoff’s at 7 p.m.

⚽ The headline for this story is “What went wrong with Atlanta United in the 2026 season?” The answer is “pretty much everything.”

SLOWING DOWN TRINIDAD

Georgia played Ole Miss twice last season. It won 43-35 in Week 8, then lost a similarly high-scoring affair in the College Football Playoff.

Trinidad Chambliss’ performance may have been the biggest difference.

Ahead of Saturday’s top-10 showdown in Oxford, our friends at DawgNation point out that Georgia failed to sack the Ole Miss quarterback a single time in either of last season’s matchups — but the Bulldog pass rush has been much better this year.

They’ve also upgraded at safety (thanks to one Bulldog transferring to Ole Miss, no less).

Other defensive decisions could also help Georgia replicate their regular season performance, which saw Chambliss complete just 53% of his passes.

• From Pro Football Focus: “In Week 8 of last season, Georgia played man coverage 40% of the time. In the playoff, that dropped to 24.7%. Chambliss’ struggles against man coverage have carried over into this year, too. His 50.7% completion rate against man coverage is 92nd in the FBS. Smart would be, well, smart to play a heavy dosage of man coverage again in this game with his elite secondary.”

On the other side of things, Ole Miss’ 101st-ranked passing defense shouldn’t give Gunner Stockton much trouble.

📺 Watch No. 2 Georgia at No. 10 Ole Miss at 7:30 p.m. Saturday on ABC.

YOUR UPSET PICK OF THE WEEK

There are just a few other good college football games on tap too — and you chose Tennessee to beat Kentucky as the official Win Column Upset Pick of the Week.

That’s only sort of an upset, of course, with the Vols at home and favored by almost a touchdown. But Kentucky’s ranked higher at the moment, I said that’s what we were going by and, by gum, we’re sticking to it.

Other CFB games of note:

• Noon: No. 9 BYU at No. 3 Utah (ABC); No. 7 Texas at No. 18 Missouri (ESPN); No. 8 UCLA at Minnesota (FOX)
• 3:30 p.m.: No. 9 Alabama at No. 15 LSU (ABC); No. 23 Oregon at No. 12 Ohio State (CBS);
• 6:15 p.m.: No. 6 Kentucky at No. 13 Tennessee (ESPN)
• 7:30 p.m.: No. 1 Miami at No. 11 Notre Dame (NBC); No. 19 Iowa at Northwestern (Fox); Louisville at Georgia Tech (ACC Network).