And just like that, the Atlanta Falcons break hearts again

The day after the Super Bowl is an awful like getting dumped.

For months, football, you and I have been together — flirting around through training camps and preseason football, realizing we might have something special through the first few weeks of the college and NFL seasons and really getting intense through the bowl season and NFL playoffs. In the middle of it all, my high school alma mater won a state title. It was then I knew that this was the season that would never end. And this all built up to the Super Bowl — with my Atlanta Falcons, no less — and a day later, we’re through.

I know, it’s you and not me, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. You warned me that you couldn’t tie yourself down to one fan and his dream season, that you’d be gone by Valentine’s Day. But, being the fool I am, I convinced myself that this would be different. This time, right after the Super Bowl, we’d jump right into training camp and relive it again and again.

But no. Here I am saddled with the endless NBA and NHL regular seasons, auto racing that begins with its Super Bowl first and works its way backwards, and baseball, whose minor-league Cobb County Braves I don’t even follow anymore. Thanks a lot.

Distraught and abandoned, I filled a massive bowl with Chocolaty Fudgy Brownie Sugary Impending Death Frozen Yogurt and put my Spotify on an endless loop of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” and sat down behind two boxes of Kleenex. Then, out of the corner of my teary eye, through the window I saw a pretty lady sitting on a swing in my backyard, also looking very alone.

Oh yeah, my wife! Don’t feel too sorry for her because she’s no football widow — she’s a football fan, too. Her Cowboys broke up with her a few weeks ago, so she’s had time to grieve.

I walked outside and re-introduced myself. She said she remembered me — although she had recalled me as better looking with more hair — and welcomed me back to the real world. She even invited me to sit on the swing with her. Then she said the three words that, as a husband, I’ve come to fear more than anything on this planet: “I’ve been thinking.”

My facial expression went from grave sadness to that sort of in-the-headlights look Bambi gets when he finds himself face to face on the asphalt with a Mack truck. My mom used to give me the ol’ “don’t make that face or it might freeze that way” lecture. It finally took because my face is forever frozen with that deer-in-the-headlights look.

We need to move this swing to over there. We should extend that paved path. Let’s stain those pavers a different color. I think we should build that grilling pad 10 feet out instead of 8. We should plant monkey grass there … no, lantana. And …

It went on and on. It may still be going on for all I know. Not only does the poor woman labor under the impression that I’m interested in doing all of this just because football season is over, but she falsely believes I’m capable of doing anything more than sitting on a couch and watching football. Hey, we’ve all got different strengths — don’t judge me!

And we can turn your grilling pad into a tiki bar. We’ll run electricity to it, put in a ceiling fan and maybe put a little TV in the corner. You’ll be able to play your Buffett music, make margaritas and watch your football right out here next season.

Football, you say?

We get started this weekend.

This story was originally published February 6, 2017 at 12:27 PM with the headline "And just like that, the Atlanta Falcons break hearts again."