Well, therein's the rub: You are trying to fly from a domestic hub, which is far from the biggest city in the country (though it may be the biggest city in your region), and meanwhile until OpenSkies takes hold, the nonstop/direct flights to almost every country in Europe from ATL are going to be on a different carrier! If anyone, it'll be KLM (part of SkyTeam) to AMS, AF (co-owned with KLM and so also SkyTeam) to CDG, LH (part of Star Alliance) to FRA, BA (part of OneWorld, but you can't earn or redeem AA miles on flying BA ATL-UK, even though AA doesn't fly direct ATL-UK!) or Bmi (part of Star Alliance) or VS (part of nothing) to LHR/LGW, etc.

So if you want to stick to one Alliance, and yet not fly the airline that dominates your home airport, you have to limit yourself to landing in just a few European countries, at least until OpenSkies.

Now, OpenSkies may change that, but (a) it's too soon to know how, and (b) even when the changes start being announced, it's hard to know how long they'll last (eg, if BA announces tomorrow that they'll fly ATL-CDG, and they start that next year, but you're planning for 2009 awards, they may drop that route by then if it doesn't work out for them during 2008!).

And just because someone flies ATL-Eur doesn't mean it'll be easy to get those awards direct. Again, sometimes awards are only easy to get with alternate routing, which of course means non-direct! (Though one ticket in economy booked 330 days out -- which is when the seat first is made available -- might not be so hard. However, you've already missed that deadline for everything next year you mentioned except maybe early fall.)

Finally, one ticket in coach doesn't necessarily cost that much $$$ if you just book far ahead of time and/or during sales, especially for late spring or early fall! (And you may have to book mileage awards at least that far ahead!) So how much work is it worth to try to earn miles (that you may or may not be able to redeem) just to redeem them for something you could have bought cheaply in cash? (And if you buy in cash, you're no longer locked into one carrier, you can choose among all carriers who have direct flights to Europe from ATL, which you can't if you're trying to redeem miles.)

Btw, I hope you realize that when you book a coach award (or a paid ticket) on a partner, it means a normal coach seat. (There may exceptions, but generally on partners you can't book things like exit row or bulkhead seats, even if your status lets you do that on your domestic airline. So consider whether an "ordinary" seat on a Delta partner would be better, if on Delta you could get at least reserve an exit row or bulkhead seat?)