Please don’t congratulate me for knowing the Falcons were going to lose

Talk about weird.

On Sunday night, the Falcons made Super Bowl history by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the most dramatic fashion possible.

For me, the whole game summed up what it means to be a Falcons fan: a continuing cycle of blind optimism, uncharacteristic success, doubt and cynicism, more uncharacteristic success, hope, genuine excitement, premature celebration and then – Boom! Bam! Bang! – heartbreak and despair.

To quote my friend Guerry Clegg, who posted this on Facebook: “You don’t watch every single episode of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ 50 times and expect them to get rescued.”

So the Falcons’ collapse wasn’t what was weird.

The weird thing was that on Monday morning people were congratulating me for predicting the Falcons would lose, as if this somehow made me a winner.

If I’d put money on the game, I would have bet on the favored Patriots to cover the 3-point spread (which they did), and during the game at least part of me would have been rooting for the Falcons to lose (which of course they did). So I guess I would have felt like a winner.

But I didn’t bet for or against the Falcons. As a fan, I was all in. I was rooting for all of them, including Shaw High alumni Philip Wheeler. And so when they lost, I was mourning as much as any other long-time fan.

Truth be told, saying the Falcons will lose is for me just a psychological ploy I’ve picked up over the years. When you believe your team is going to lose and they win, the level of elation you feel is much higher than what you’d feel if you already believed they would win.

If your team loses and you expect it, you’re less distraught. I never want to feel the pain I felt as a 12-year-old when the Falcons choked to the Cowboys in the playoffs in 1981.

And on Super Bowl Sunday, I didn’t feel nearly that much pain. That’s because I had prepared myself for what was going to happen.

This story was originally published February 10, 2017 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Please don’t congratulate me for knowing the Falcons were going to lose."