To summarize our 11-year experience trying to fly non-spillable batteries into the US, you can do it, by the rules, but the airlines personnel won't allow you to.
Yes, you can argue and sometimes persuade them, but it's just not worth it when your flight leaves in half an hour. US airports already had a fair share of our batteries left behind, so we simply gave up. For quite some time now FIRST has provided international teams with loaner batteries without prior arrangements.
Probably the best advice is to ship/drive them to Atlanta.