As per tradition, the Packer Ranter's Fall semester intern class battled for
the coveted Tracy White Certificate of Excellence. Because it’s been known to
catapult average-appearing students into top-notch job prospects,
the Tracy White Certificate of Excellence (TWCoE) has grown both in legend and
prestige. Former Ranter interns have gone on to exciting careers and
time-consuming hobbies in insurance claims, craft store entrepreneurship and social
media “specialization.”
While we appreciate the efforts of our four interns throughout
the season (they are all invited to join us in Port Washington’s Fish Day this
summer), we simply do not believe in participation trophies. Only one truly
deserving intern receives the TWCoE signed by both Mr. Hillside and
myself while the rest are rewarded by the experience of working for a real website.
After careful consideration, we eliminated Pigtails and
Village Idiot from the final round – partly for their uninspiring brainstorms
but mostly for their incompetent nacho skills – leaving Cornbreath and
Dingleberry to battle it out. (We only use Delta Tau Chi-style names here at Ranter
HQ.) The final challenge was laid out as follows via email:
The Packers are
playing the Falcons for the NFC Championship Game this Sunday. You have two
days to surprise us. Good luck.
We refreshed our emails regularly, expecting clarifying
questions galore but they did not come...we knew we had picked our final
candidates well. Only 12 hours had passed before I received a knock at my door. A
friendly delivery man asked if I was the one whom they called “Greenfield.” I
nodded and he handed me a heavy box wrapped in shiny green and gold ribbon. The
note attached read, “May this offering be 1/100th delightful as my experience has been. With everything I am, Cornbreath.” Inside
was a specially prepared care package of meats and a customized “Run the Table”
giant cookie (estimated total value with rush shipping of $450+).
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| Nod bad, Cornbreath. |
No question that Cornbreath had brought his “A” game to the intern championship challenge. But playing to our well-known and storied appetites was also an obvious choice; maybe too obvious?
Time was winding down without word from Dingleberry. If she
was a minute late, she would be disqualified and Cornbreath would receive both
the Certificate and accompanying cachet. While just about ready to call it off, Franklin and
I received a curious message:
Coordinates – it had to be. I copied them into my browser:
It was the Georgia Dome – the home of the Atlanta Falcons. So what?
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| Google Earth view of the Georgia Dome |
As I zoomed in, I realized Dingleberry wasn’t showing me the
Georgia Dome but rather the construction area right next door. It was the Mercedes-Benz $1.5 billion future site of the Atlanta Falcons, expected to be completed next year.
 |
| Look closer. |
There, just south
of the Dome in a dirt-flatten area the words “GO PACK GO” surfaced as plain as
day.
 |
| Winner winner, chicken dinner! |
The most amazing thing was – if you could really pinpoint a single amazing
thing in the astonishing stunt – was that from ground level you probably
wouldn’t be able to see it. Only from a highly elevated viewpoint could someone
take notice, like via Google Earth. And it was all just for a deliberate audience of two Packer Ranters. Simply outstanding. We would eventually have to hear all the details
of how this was done in such a short amount of time, but for the moment, we had
to let her know immediately:
Five seconds later, she came back with the following:
