Let’s face it, there hasn’t been much to cheer about with the Atlanta Falcons in almost a decade. We’ve had seven straight seasons of missing the playoffs, and the way this season is going, that number
may extend to eight. It seems like the team is always competitive in the division up until mid season every year, and then the patented Falcons’ second half collapse happens, derailing all hopes of a successful campaign.
It’s clear this is an organizational issue, right? Well… maybe the issue was right in front of our disgruntled fan faces all along. The Falcons are just cursed. Curses are a staple in major league sports. The curse of the Bambino sought to explain the Red Sox’ 86-year championship drought following the controversial sale of baseball legend Babe Ruth, and was finally lifted when the Sox won the 2004 World Series. When Pro Bowl quarterback Bobby Layne was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1958, Layne supposedly said the Lions would “not win for 50 years,” essentially casting a hex on the team which has held up and then some, as Detroit has only won three playoff games since.
Sports curses are embedded in every major league storied franchise, so since it’s Halloween, let’s take a look at some of the spooky ones that might be swirling around our Atlanta Falcons.
Michael Vick 2004 Madden Cover
Anyone who was into sports games in the early 2000s knows there was only one player who was quite literally unstoppable; this was Michael Vick in the 2004 edition of Madden. Vick’s Pro Bowl performance the year prior earned him the title of cover athlete for the game that year. Not even 100 overall Shaquille O’Neal in the third installment of NBA 2k was as dominant as Vick was in that year’s Madden. Players would use the Falcons and not throw a single pass all game, instead just using Vick’s legs to run circles around the defense, or just launch an off-balance ball 50 yards downfield casually.
Howeverm Vick wasn’t allowed to be this good in the game without a sacrifice, and it came in the form of his real life right fibula. In 2003 during a pre-season game against the Baltimore Ravens, Vick fractured his right fibula just five days after Madden ‘04 was released, causing him to miss majority of the season. Vick would come back later that year in Week 13 being substituted in for Doug Johnson, and would make his starting debut the following week. Vick’s injury was just one example of the infamous “Madden Curse,” where a player who graces the cover of the video game follows it up with an underwhelming season or in Vick’s case, an injury.
Atlanta Falcons Bird Lady Curse
The Atlanta Falcons Bird Lady has been a cornerstone of Atlanta Falcons football culture since I can remember. For context, my family has had season tickets to Falcons games since 2003, and in the section right next to us there was always a lady wearing a costume fitted with Falcons wings, red, white, and black makeup, and anything else you can imagine to rep the dirty birds. Her name is Carolyn Freeman, but she calls herself the “Bird Lady.”
Her nickname reportedly came in 1998 when then Falcons players Jamal Anderson and Jesse Tuggle dubbed her the Bird Lady after she caught their attention. Every sports team has its super fans, some have more than others, but Freeman is the super fan for Atlanta (when I tell you this lady has never missed a game, I mean it.) She’s gotten league wide attention, and in 2016 was named a BudLight NFL Super Fan, and appeared in a Wilson Sports super fan tailgate series.
But just last year she made headlines for the wrong reasons, after allegedly scamming Chiefs fans out of a catered tailgate event before Kansas City played Atlanta on September 22nd. The fans raised $14,000 for the tailgate and a deposit was paid to Freeman for her to secure everything needed for the event, however when the day came, the Bird Lady didn’t show, and Arrowhead faithful reported her to Atlanta Police for fraud, and she was arrested a month later.
Now was the Bird Lady always shady? Who knows, but if she was, she may have been casting a dark cloud on the team for decades.
What happened to “Big Fred?”
Now this may be my inner child’s fears coming out, but does anyone remember “Big Fred”. If you don’t, he was a large inflatable version of Freddie the Falcon, and the entertainment crew would often bring Big Fred out during halftime, time outs, or quarter changes. He seemed to be sort of a party trick for the game, and he’d often fight with Freddie in most of his appearances.
I haven’t seen Big Fred in years, so I wonder what the team did with him. As a child, he always scared me, due to his frame, large stature, and his color being a deep red instead of the softer beige Freddie the Falcon is. While he frightened me on every occasion, I always wondered what happened to him. There’s almost no mention of the mascot online, and there’s only one video I can find on the Atlanta Falcons website showcasing one of his interactions with Freddie the Falcon.
It’s almost like he doesn’t exist. Did the Falcons do something to him? Could he be haunting us from the bird nest in the sky? I guess we’ll never know.
Relocation of Historical Black Churches
Before construction got underway for Atlanta’s state of the art Mercedes-Benz stadium, some work had to be done to find the perfect spot. That spot was south of the team’s old home the Georgia Dome, and there were buildings in the area that couldn’t coexist with the new stadium. These buildings weren’t just grocery stores, or an Amazon facility, however; they were two historical black churches with deep roots in the surrounding community.
According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, both Friendship Baptist Church and Mount Vernon were offered large sums of money to relocate their congregations, making way for the new stadium. Friendship Baptist accepted a deal from the city for $19.5 million to relocate, and had their final service on May 25th, 2014. Mount Vernon however was a tougher sell. They were reportedly offered $6.2 million by the Georgia World Congress Center, but initially rejected it. The city would match the GWCCA’s offer bringing it to $14.5 million, which would later be accepted by Mt. Vernon, and their final service was held on March 9th, 2014. Friendship Baptist church was founded in 1826 making it Atlanta’s oldest Black Baptist congregation, and Mt. Vernon in 1921.
Since the sale, both churches remain open, but you can’t help but think about the effects of the Falcons now playing on “sacred land.” Two years after the churches were demolished, Atlanta blew a 28-3 lead in Super Bowl 51. The first year of playing in the Mercedes-Benz, the Falcons would fall short of defending their NFC championship title to the eventual Super Bowl winning Eagles. Outside of the 2017 season, Atlanta has no playoff appearances in the Mercedes-Benz stadium. Out of all the curses, this might be the one that lines up best with the timing of Atlanta’s recent struggles.
Atlanta Sells its Soul for the 1996 Olympics
Now this is one that has affected the broader Atlanta sports scene. The 1996 Olympics put Atlanta on the map, brought in unprecedented revenue for the city, and set the stage for Atlanta’s dominant cultural wave leading into the 21st century, but how exactly Atlanta acquired the bid could have included a sacrifice of successful sports seasons for the next two decades. Rumor has it that the city of Atlanta made some shady deals behind the scenes to beat out beautiful cities like Toronto, Melbourne, Belgrade, and the birthplace of the Olympics, Athens in the final round of bids.
Don’t get me wrong, forever I love Atlanta (see what I did there?), but I would have told you there was no chance they could beat out the aforementioned cities to host a sporting event as big as the Olympics. Well, they may have dealt too many of their cards at once.
On the surface, Atlanta was able to provide the most infrastructure and TV revenue streams, but there’s deeper corruption rumors and reports, too. Greece claimed there was a conspiracy set out by Coca-Cola, a longtime sponsor of the Olympics which is headquartered in Atlanta, and upon hearing the news, Greeks poured Coca-Cola bottles in the sewers of Athens in a protest.
An Athens newspaper even went on to say the “Olympic flame will not be lit with oil, but with Coca-Cola.” 1996 was the centennial anniversary of the modern Olympics, and as Athens hosted the first, the city felt it was only right to host it this time. Atlanta was also accused of bribing IOC members with $120,000 in cash, gold credit cards and college scholarships for their children.
What allegations had weight to them has still yet to be truly uncovered, but one thing is for sure, Atlanta’s sport scene suffered for years after the 1996 Olympics. Between 1996 and 2020, Atlanta was 0-108 when it came to winning a championship in five major North American Sports league (NFL, NBA, MLB NHL, NCAAF).
The first championship would come when the Braves beat the Astros in 2021 to win their first World Series since 1995. Then UGA’s Bulldogs would win the National Championship two years in a row, defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide in 2022 and TCU’s Horned Frogs in 2023. The Olympics curse seems to be broken for some Atlanta teams; not the Dirty Birds, though.
Honorable Mention: The Falcon is a trickster god
Maybe our mascot in itself is a curse. In Norse mythology, the falcon isn’t necessarily a noble bird of prey, but instead is a preferred form of the trickster god Loki. His sole purpose is to create the most dramatic, improbable, and heartbreaking scenarios possible, never allowing his fellow gods to know peace or predictability. This must explain why Falcons fans can’t trust any leads we develop on teams, because too many times have we gotten our hopes us and blown them.
As you get ready for a night of scares, just remember these curses and hope the most frightening thing about this weekend isn’t the way the Falcons play against the Patriots Sunday.
