LOAD UP THE BUS, PENGUINS: YOU'RE HEADED DOWN OTTAWA'S ROAD

Those into cheap symbolism may appreciate that the group who won Pittsburgh's slot licence yesterday -- dashing the Pittsburgh Penguins and the NHL's hopes of getting a free arena -- includes the mother of iconic former Steelers running back Jerome (The Bus) Bettis.

That alone doesn't show that Pittsburgh is a Steelers town and a Steelers town only. Bettis' ties do peel back a couple of layers on the way to the inevitable conclusion that only true believers and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman (whose reaction yesterday was described as "hysterical" in one hometown column) would think the NHL's Penguins, even with Sidney Crosby, have a long-term future in the so-called Steel City.

It seems mystifying as to how it could have come to this in Pittsburgh. You know what, though? Once upon a time, it seemed mystifying how Ottawa couldn't keep a Canadian Football League team. Now it has lost two. Essentially, Pittsburgh is to the NHL what Ottawa is to the CFL -- the big small city where there should be a healthy franchise, but there isn't.

The Penguins' fan support hasn't waned during four straight losing seasons, but hey, there was a time when Ottawans packed Lansdowne Park to watch bad Rough Riders teams. It's hard to believe that now, isn't it?

The Pittsburgh-Ottawa parallels run deeper than the Allegheny River. Far from the popular image of the Steel City, Pittsburgh's economy is very much like Ottawa's -- built around the hi-tech, tourism and the research-and-development sectors (Pittsburgh also has a big finance sector, but Ottawa has Canada's federal government), as well as strong universities. The city's biggest employer is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; the second-biggest is the University of Pittsburgh itself.

At the risk of generalizing about people who work in the hi-tech or R&D sectors, that might mean having a sizable demographic of people who have the disposable income to attend lots of sports events, but who aren't interested in being fans for all seasons. They might understand that it's for the general good to take an interest in the main team in town, especially when it's a smaller city with a paranoia about the team being sold to some rich guy who will move it someplace both larger and warmer.

You see that in Ottawa -- the city's crazy for the Sens and junior hockey, but the Renegades shut down in April and Triple A baseball's Lynx are headed out of town. (All of that went down after I moved here -- maybe I'm the problem.) That line from the Will Ferrell movie Talladega Nights -- "if you ain't first, you're last" is really true here.

Likewise, Pittsburgh's track record suggests it is a city on the way to being a de facto one-team town. For decades in Pittsburgh, the Pirates were on top, while the Steelers were the ragtag bunch. In the early '70s, the Steelers' Super Bowl dynasty took shape and football became No. 1 in Pittsburgh. It has remained so ever since, even when Mario Lemieux was leading the Penguins to the Stanley Cup.

The Pirates weren't totally finished, but the "We Are Family" team with the famously funky uniforms who won the city's last World Series title in 1979 actually ranked 10th in attendance in a 12-team league. That should tell you where Pittsburghers' sports focus was -- almost solely on the Steelers. In the '80s, both the Pirates and Penguins flirted with relocation.

In fact, since 1993, the year Barry Bonds left town, the Pirates have finished 12th or lower in the National League in attendance every year save for 2001 -- when they got a temporary bump from their new ballpark and shot all the way up to 11th.

It needs to be stressed that it's unclear how strong the cause-and-effect is between a local economy that demands a lot of educated eggheads and a city's ability to support different sports teams for 12 months of the year. Ottawa and Pittsburgh, though, are similar in size and demographics, and while it could be a coincidence, you have a Canadian city that gone all in (gambling references seem kind of apropos today) on hockey and a U.S. city that seems to mostly care about its football team.

That doesn't mean the media is wrong to play the Penguins crisis as a referendum on the direction Gary Bettman has taken the NHL have faced since the lockout ended 17 months ago. It's the first post-lockout team crisis, and it's coming in a city that actually gets snow, no less.

The Penguins may get their new arena yet (just not for free), but given what's happened to Ottawa's sportscape, it's hard to see the Penguins ever regain solid footing in the hearts and minds of Pittsburghers -- at least beyond a small niche market.

Bettman and the NHL would be better off to accept that relocation is inevitable. Instead, they're wasting their time and money trying chasing a Bus that has long since left the station.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.