No time for football in the morning

Talk about rude awakenings. The 2005 football season unofficially began Saturday morning with a snooze button.

At 4:59 a.m., there is simply no way to arise from a deep sleep and wrap your groggy head around a live kickoff in less than five minutes. At this hour you can be thankful for one thing: You don't live in Indiana, where eschewing daylight savings time cost Colts fans an extra hour of sleep.

Two domed franchises - the Atlanta Falcons and Indianapolis Colts - traveled to another dome 13 time zones away in Tokyo. More than 45,000 people gathered on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and welcomed the most American of spectacles.

This was the first live-action football game of the new season. High schools begin playing in two weeks and the colleges wait until the end of the month, but the NFL conducts a fake season that commenced with a marquee quarterback matchup of Super Bowl hopefuls.

Michael Vick and Peyton Manning were finished before the sun came up here and long before game MVP Matt Schaub led the Falcons to a 27-21 win. Like the old Army ads, these teams did more before 8 a.m. than most people do all day.

It was certainly a disorienting experience, watching beer ads and instant replays in the pitch dark, broken only by the glow of the television set and laptop computer. Even the dogs didn't want to get up and go out.

Sports journalists generally never get over their

collegiate nocturnal habits. Late night tipoffs that disregard deadlines, Monday Night Football games that drift into Tuesdays and the 2 a.m. SportsCenter with complete West Coast scores become ordinary for those in the industry.

In short, we are not morning people. On the rarest occasions we might roll over in bed to turn on the television and instead of Good Morning America see live British Open golf from the distant links of Scotland or World Cup soccer from Korea or shot put contests from ancient Olympia.

But football is too violent a sport to embrace before breakfast. Seeing Vick hand the ball off to Warrick Dunn while you're still brushing your teeth is something that will never become customary.

It seemed fitting that the Falcons' most consistent practice in the pre-dawn opening half was false starting - on the second snap of the game and twice on the goal line. It seemed fitting that both Vick and Manning weren't sharp enough to avoid throwing interceptions on their only two offensive series before retiring to the safety of the bench.

The first official anxious moment of the season took place at 5:32 a.m. EDT, when Vick scrambled 11 yards for first down at the Indy 13 and the collective gasp throughout Georgia could have been mistaken for sleep apnea.

The second anxious moment came two minutes later, when Dunn was a little slow getting up off the turf inside the Indy 5.

But nobody key got hurt and - from the perspective of the sofa, which was admittedly out of sorts - the Falcons looked pretty impressive.

At least as impressive as any team can look in early August on the other side of the world.

Sure, Atlanta committed too many stupid penalties (13 total), especially on kickoffs and the goal line. Sure, the Falcons' solid defensive effort wasn't against the Colts' finest offensive shot. Sure the late second-half viewing was preempted by a 4-year-old requiring breakfast and his Saturday morning fix of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.

But even in the dim light of the morning, the Falcons looked like a team truly capable of posting consecutive winning seasons for the first time in its history.

They looked like a squad ready for prime time - and with four national nighttime kickoffs and a Thanksgiving Day appearance in Detroit, they certainly will get more exposure than they ever have.

Maybe this will be the Falcons' year.

Or maybe it's just time for a nap. Wake me up when the real season begins.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.