One of the little domestic pleasures of our little non-domestic life is sleeping in late on weekends and then doing the NY Times crossword puzzle in bed.  With that exercise, the brain wakes up before the body does.

Today, one of the puzzle's clues was "Only facility in the world to have hosted the Olympics, Super Bowl, and Final Four."  We thought about it for a minute and realized that the Georgia Dome, a mere 4 1/2 miles south of here, a straight-line shot down Northside Drive, hosted many Olympic events back in 1996.  We saw men's basketball and volleyball there.  It's also hosted at least one Super Bowl, maybe more, and just a few years ago hosted the Final Four basketball tournament. But until this morning, we never realized that it was the only facility in the world to have hosted all of those events. 

Of course, now it's been demolished.  According to the on-line discussion of today's puzzle, the Georgia Dome "cost $214 million to build, opened in 1992, seated over 71,000 people and got demolished and replaced in 2017 by the $1.6 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which also seats about 71,000 people."     

"Hopefully, those people are getting significantly more enjoyment from their fancy new stadium!," the Times added sarcastically.

So going back to last weekend's discussion about all the football greatness that occurs within a 3-hour drive of here, we now realize that in the center of that circle is that unique venue, the only one in the world, that's hosted Olympic games, Super Bowls, and the Final Four basketball championship, the Georgia Dome.

We also recognize that the term we coined for that 3-hour drive circle, the "3H ACE" (for 3-Hour Atlanta Circle of Excellence) never caught on.  It's not become an internet meme. ESPN sportscasters don't glibly throw it out assuming everybody knows what it means, athletes aren't getting it tattooed on their biceps,  and young women don't have it written on their thighs. We also realize that it's been a long time since we've seen a young woman's thighs, so for all we know, maybe it is written there (but we doubt it).

The problem may be in the acronym itself.  Saying "3H ACE" is neither fun nor easy we'll be the first to admit.  So instead, from here on in, we'll just say "the three-hour drive" and assume that you'll know that we mean the radius defined by a three-hour drive time from here, that circle within which four of the top seven ranked football teams in the country are located.  In fact, we could say that the three-hour drive is centered around the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which is adjacent to the venerable but sadly former Georgia Dome.   

Today, the No. 3 ranked University of Georgia Bulldogs travelled  9 minutes outside of the three-hour drive and are playing an SEC rival, the No. 24 ranked South Carolina Gamecocks.  Georgia's leading 20-10 at the half, and if anything Georgia is a second-half team, so we're expecting good things. Tomorrow, we'll see how the rest of our fantasy 3-Hour Drive Conference did.