New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - Featured Discussion Which regular season game are you anticipating the most?

This should give you a little head start....

Quote:

The Falcons–Saints rivalry, originally known as the Dixie Championship and now more often called the Southern Showdown, is a divisional rivalry in the NFC South of the National Football League. At 86 games played, the series is by far the oldest and most established rivalry in the division. Born one year apart, the Saints and Falcons were the first two NFL franchises in the Deep South (Washington and Dallas being arguably southern but not in the traditional Deep South). They have shared many of the same players, such as Morten Andersen (the leading scorer in both franchises' histories), Bobby Hebert (who quarterbacked for both teams in the 1990s), and Joe Horn (the Pro Bowl Saints receiver who left for the Falcons in 2007). They have also drawn coaches from the same families, and even shared a head coach: recent Falcons coach Jim L. Mora is the son of longtime Saints coach Jim E. Mora, and former Falcons and Saints coach Wade Phillips is the son of former Saints coach Bum Phillips. Although rarely noted by the national media - no doubt due to both teams' long stretches of futility - games between the Falcons and Saints have riveted their respective regions for more than 40 years. Fans of both teams consider the other their most important and hated opponent.

ESPN.com writer Len Pasquarelli has cited the rivalry as one of the best in sports: "Every year, bus caravans loaded with rowdy (and usually very inebriated) fans make the seven-hour trip between the two cities. Unless you've attended a Falcons-Saints debauchery-filled afternoon, you'll just have to take my word for how much fun it really can be."[1]

Atlanta currently leads the all-time series 46-40 (45-40 regular season, 1-0 playoffs). It began in 1967, the first year of play for the Saints, and press accounts from that game, including the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune and Los Angeles Times, refer to it as the "Dixie Championship." In recent years, the game has sometimes been referred to as the "Southern Showdown." This has especially been the case leading up to the first of the two 2011 games, by WWL radio in New Orleans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcons...Saints_rivalry