In the past eight days, I've been to four football games, 1 high school, 2 college, and 1 professional. I sure do enjoy football season. If nothing else, it gets me out of the house.

I accompanied Trey to the Atlanta Falcons' prime-time home opener against the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday in a game that ended just before midnight. It was a fantastic game featuring a bunch of turnovers, big plays, and lead changes, and I'm quite pleased that I had the opportunity to go.

It was unclear who was better represented among the fan-worn jerseys in the stadium: current Falcons QB Matt Ryan or former Falcons QB Michael Vick. Ryan outplayed Vick in the game, if for no other reason than Vick's 3 turnovers. Vick didn't even finish the game, suffering a concussion late in the 3rd quarter and being booed off the field by the ever-classy Altanta fans.

It would have only been better if the Dolphins hadn't lost their game earlier in the day, making it look increasingly like another terrible season is in the making. True story: waiting to use a urinal at the Georgia Dome, I was the only person wearing a Miami Dolphins t-shirt in a long line of people clad in Eagles and Falcons apparel. Finally, I reached the front of the line and prepared to relieve myself. Immediately the fellow behind me loudly sighed and said, "we're going to be here awhile. The guy in up here is wearing a Dolphins shirt, and we all know they're slow starters." Smart ass.

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The Atlanta Falcons played like dogs this Sunday, so it was fitting that Michael Vick returned to town to put them out of their misery.

Michael Vick had predicted that he would receive a standing ovation on his first return home to the Georgia Dome following his eviction due to federal conviction as a canine killer. He pretty much got what he expected. Never have I attended a sporting event that was quite so much a love letter to a single person, an event where a player was indeed bigger than the game, but that was what happened. Very few, it seemed, came for the game. (This was a good thing, as there wasn't one played, at least not by the Falcons.) Everyone was there for number 7. And to his credit as an athlete and entertainer, he gave us what we came to see. Most Falcons fans had justifiably fled by late in the third quarter, leaving only Eagles and Vick fans, whose chants of "Put in Vick" were answered as Vick drove the Eagles down the field for another touchdown. Then everyone went home.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't take some vengeful enjoyment in watching the prodigal Vick return to Atlanta with the Eagles and pull the wings off the injured Falcons, 34-7. (Atlanta's lone touchdown couldn't have been less relevant, scored as time expired in the game against a third-string Eagles defense.) I figure the Falcons deserved the punishment it after the ingracious way that they treated the Dolphins in the season opener. So I ask, Falcons, how did you like them apples, because I thought they tasted pretty sweet.

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I just returned from Philadelphia, where my brother and I watched the Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Miami Dolphins. Despite the scattered rain, bitter cold, and Dolphins' tenth loss of the season (0 for 10: we're still prefect!), I had a great time.

Philadelphia fans have a reputation as real assholes. And I can now tell you first hand that everything that you hear about them is all true. Though most of the fans were good natured before and during the game (a father pointed me out to his toddler as "the enemy," the security guard frisking me upon entering harassed me for wearing Dolphins' gear to the game, and the attendant who announced the discontinuation of alcohol service at halftime urged the crowd to yell at me instead of her), by the fourth quarter, with the Eagles' firmly in control of the game, the fans had worked up enough courage to devolve into a surly bunch of jerks. One fellow continued to taunt me until the final second ticked off the clock for supporting a "bunch of losers," and another that I encountered in line for the bathroom told me that "the Dolphins' fucking suck" and he hoped that I personally would die a slow and painful death.

My brother repeatedly pointed out that insulting me for being a Dolphins' fan during this winless season was the equivalent of abusing a helpless puppy. Well, now I know how Philadelphians treat puppies: they must be Michael Vick fans.

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You know that I'm a fan of the Miami Dolphins. I have been since I first took an interest in the game of football back in the late 1980s. My favorite wide receiver of all time is a relative unknown named Orande Gadsden who played only 4 years exclusively for the Dolphins (and who, by the way, was the last man to catch a pass in the NFL by Dan Marino). I can tell you every quarterback who has started for the team since Marino retired. (Hmm, let's see; there's Huard, Fiedler, Griese, Lucas, Rosenfels, Feeley, Frerotte, Culpepper, Harrington, and now Lemon. Get ready, Packers fans, it will be worse than you think, trust me.) And we've been slightly above mediocre for most of that time. Hell, we've only had 4 losing seasons since joining the NFL! But if there's one aspect of the game that we've totally failed to grasp in the past two decades, it's coaching.

When current owner Wayne Huizenga bought the team in the early 90s, Don Shula was our coach. Shula was, in all regards, a great coach, one of the best in history. However, when Shula decided to retire 10 years ago, Huizenga chose to go with a proven wash-out at couch, replaced Shula with Jimmy Johnson, a Floridian who had great success with the Dallas Cowboys. Expectations were high. I thought we'd be great again, perhaps even Super Bowl bound. But the team went nowhere. This was likely because of a conflict between Marino, our aging superstar who naturally preferred the passing game, and Johnson, who would have preferred to restart the team from scratch with a focus on the run. In any event, after 3 years of exhausting turmoil, both Johnson and Marino were out.

In comes Dave Wannstedt, Johnson's protege who is fresh off several mediocre seasons with the Bears. Again I had high hopes. Wannstedt looked pretty good at times with the Bears, getting by with a team with less-than-stellar talent. Turns out that the talent problems were probably Wannstedt's fault. In Miami, he always looked lost, like a babysitter who doesn't know what to do when the tweens he's supervising get into the coffee ice cream and start bouncing off the walls. Wannstedt championed an ivy league quarterback with extremely limited passing skills, and he brought in Ricky Williams, who was the player voted "Most Likely To Destroy His Own Team" before the rise of Terrell Owens. We tanked. Wannstedt was fired in the middle of his fourth season, less than a year after receiving a contract extension from Huizenga as a reward for consistent under-performance.

Though I pulled for Wannstedt's temporary replacement, Jim Bates, to be the new coach, no one listened to me. Wannstedt's players had come together for Jim Bates, winning out at the end of the season. Instead of rewarding Bates, Huizenga traded competency for a "name" coach, LSU's head coach Nick Saban. Like a fool, I jumped on the bandwagon and agreed that he'd take us to the heights of the NFL again. But like Wannstedt, Saban soon proved that he couldn't control professional athletes or evaluate talent. Sure, he ditched Fiedler, but he replaced him with Culpepper. (True story: at Dan Marino's Hall of Fame induction ceremony, my brother and I noticed that Culpepper's numbers were comparable to some of the all-time greats. I remember my brother commenting that someone was going to look at those numbers and mistakenly think that he was actually good. Apparently, that someone was Nick Saban.) At least Saban fooled more than just me. He tricked professional sportswriters into thinking we'd reach the Super Bowl in 2007. Instead we had a 6-10 record, the third worst in the AFC. And then, like a kick in the crotch after a punch in the gut, Saban jumped ship earlier this week to head back to the relative safety (and economic goldmine) of college coaching.

Now it's back to the drawing board to select a new coach. I've lost my faith. I'd hope that Huizenga could find someone qualified, but I know now that he's just going to grab a big name. In fact, I heard today that he's already planning to interview other washed-out ex-NFL coaches, including Dom Capers (a confused mess who couldn't manage a winning season in 5 years with the Houston Texans), Mike Mularkey (purportedly an "offensive genius," though he couldn't settle a quarterback controversy between the clueless J.P. Losman and mediocre Kelly Holcolmb for two years with the Buffalo Bills), Chan Gailey (an Dallas Cowboys head coach who fled criticism to Georgia Tech, where he can't get his students to play a complete 4 quarters or manage a game clock), and Jim Mora, Jr. (known to Atlanta Falcons' fans as "the man who ruined Michael Vick," he's every bit as bad as his father but without the entertaining press conferences).

So now the Dolphins have 2 or 3 more rebuilding years ahead, where the sputtering offense will have an ineffective overhaul as the aging defense falls apart under it's own weight. I'm starting to understand how Raiders fans feel.

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