ATLANTA – With one of the defining games in Atlanta's history only days away, there's a shirt making the rounds in Atlanta that sums up the city's mood effectively enough. It's a stark black-and-white picture of local product Samuel L. Jackson as Jules from "Pulp Fiction," with Afro and huge pistol at the ready. Bracketing Jules are three words. "Rise up," the Falcons' 2012 motto, are two. The third? Well, it starts with an "M," it's got 12 letters, and the mid-word "F" is a Falcons logo.

Yep. Rise up, mother... At long last. With the 49ers at the door and possible citywide affirmation just beyond, that's where Atlanta's at right now.

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To understand how Atlanta is approaching this Falcons game, you have to have an appreciation for where this city's been. Long derided as one of the worst sports towns in America, Atlanta fans have more reason than you can imagine for not showing up to playoff games, for not out-shouting the opposition, for giving up and going home in the seventh inning. In 154 professional seasons across baseball, football, basketball and hockey (twice), Atlanta has exactly one championship: the 1995 Braves.

One. ONE. That in itself is enough for Atlanta fans to be skeptical. One hundred fifty-three times bitten, 154th time shy, you know. But what's been worse is the heartbreaking, fan-devastating way Atlanta's lost out on championships, or even opportunities for championships.

"This is one of the most fragile fanbases, mentally, in the country," says John Kincade, who hosts a sports talk show on Atlanta's 680 The Fan. "Not just the Falcons, Atlanta as a whole. There's a dark cloud, an insecurity, a feeling that the national media doesn't love us. Every time the fans have bought in, Lucy has moved the football. It's scarred this community."





The Braves story, you already know. Over a decade and a half, they reached the postseason every single year and came away with exactly one championship, brought low by a different villain every time: Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield, Jim Leyritz, and so on. They've squandered chances like no team in sports history.

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The Hawks had the misfortune to have one of the best players of the '80s in Dominique Wilkins playing at the exact same time as one of the best players in history in Larry Bird. The Flames and Thrashers played hockey in a town that, transplants aside, honestly couldn't care less about hockey.

So it falls to the Falcons, who have their own history of astonishing collapse. They've surrendered in-game playoff leads to the 1980 Dallas Cowboys and the 2010 Green Bay Packers. The night before their lone Super Bowl appearance, their moral and spiritual leader, Eugene Robinson, was caught soliciting an undercover cop for sex. One of their two most electrifying players ever, Michael Vick, broke his leg just as he was becoming a superstar, and then had a little problem with dogs come to light. Last year's team couldn't even manage a single offensive point in the postseason, the third straight playoff loss in the Matt Ryan-Mike Smith era.

You see what we're dealing with here. This is a town that doesn't just expect to lose, it's certain of it. So as Russell Wilson led the Seahawks from a 20-point deficit in the fourth quarter of last week's divisional playoffs, the prevailing emotion wasn't, "How can this be happening?" but "Of course."

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