I like the Atlanta Falcons and I love NFL football. And to my mind, the only way football should ever be played is outdoors, in the elements and on natural grass.

That said, it would be a mistake to build a new home for the Birds to take the place of the Georgia Dome, as has been proposed.

Team President Rich McKay floated the idea a week or so ago of enlisting the state's help to build a new, open-air stadium adjacent to the Dome on the campus of the World Congress Center.

Taxpayers built the Dome for $214 million back in 1992. It still looks like a spanking-new facility to the casual visitor, although in NFL years it's sprouting a few gray hairs. Hence, McKay's suggestion that the team needs a newer, more competitive stadium in which to play.

Unlike last time, when taxpayers picked up the entire tab via the hotel-motel tax, McKay suggested the Falcons would help pay for a replacement stadium.

But I think that, even though most Georgians love their star-crossed Falcons, McKay's proposal is essentially dead on arrival - just as it should be.

For starters, McKay and team owner Arthur Blank could not possibly have picked a worse time to propose a new stadium. The only thing dropping faster than state tax revenues lately has been the stock market.

Georgia is facing the worst budget crunch it has seen since the Great Depression, and that budgetary strife is reflected down to the county and city levels as well. Nearly every county in the metro area is running a sizeable budget deficit and many have had to cut services.

The Cobb government, traditionally run with a tight fist, is in better shape than most, but the Cobb school system is gasping, with roughly 1,000 teachers having gotten pink slips this spring and the rest of the system's staff facing furlough days and across-the-board pay cuts. You would have been thought daft had you suggested five years ago that the county would be confronted with such dire times just ahead.

Moreover, even if times were good, a new stadium would not be an easy sell. The state just has too many other problems. Our traffic congestion in the metro area is getting worse and worse; there is no assurance that Georgia is any better prepared for the next drought than it was for the last one; and it may take years to reverse the damage the budget crunch is doing to our already lagging public schools.

Blank has been a blessing for the Falcons since he bought the team in 2002. His love for the players, the fans and the city are obvious. And until now, his affections have been reciprocated.

But let's face it. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, is one of the richest men in Georgia, if not the country, with a net worth estimated at $1.3 billion. If he thinks his team needs a new stadium, he could afford to build it himself on a site of his choosing, with perhaps a token contribution from taxpayers, but no more than that. That's how Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones built his new stadium that opened last year.

And as for the oft-heard argument that new stadiums and arenas are an economic boon for areas nearby, a growing body of evidence shows that is not true.

Heavily subsidized stadium projects are significantly more expensive, on average, than similar-sized privately funded projects, according to a 2007 study by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. It also found that stadiums where taxpayers picked up most of the tab were $65 million more costly, on average, than those built mostly with private money.

Just as significant, studies show that rather than generating new revenues, such facilities merely attract money from other attractions. In other words, consumers are shifting their entertainment spending from, say, a movie or restaurant to a ballgame.

In football, it often pays to go for the long pass in a short-yardage situation, when the defense is least expecting it. But our economic hard times are no game. I suspect taxpayers will find it easy to swat away Blank's bomb - and so should state and local politicians.

Joe Kirby is Editorial Page Editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and co-author of the new "Then & Now: Marietta Revisited."