NEW YORK -- You people are crazy. Crazy about sports, that is.

No offense intended, but the rest of the nation has noticed the level of craziness. I refer to Sporting News magazine, which last week made it official and declared Pittsburgh the No. 1 sports town in the nation.

I'm a New Yorker and not all that much of a sports fan, but I was not in the least bit surprised by this news. I know that even Boston and Chicago have to give it up to Steelers City when it comes to fandom. Don't tell my New York neighbors that I said this, but we cannot hold a candle to the 'Burgh when it comes to loving sports. I sure don't. In fact, I don't even like football, which actually remains a viable lifestyle choice -- outside Pittsburgh.

Inside Pittsburgh, it's not an option.

That much was clear as recently as last month, when I visited my best friend, Lynn. She lives in Monroeville and works Downtown, which is where my Amtrak train arrived on Game Night, the very first one of the NFL season. When I figured out my scheduling snafu, I immediately apologized. It was crazy for me to arrive just minutes before kickoff. Knowing that I was going to be staying with a family full of Steelers fans (is there any other kind of family in Pittsburgh?), I was right to wonder if anybody would want to pick me up at the station or whether I would have to wait until the post-game special was over.

Then it turned out that Lynn remembered how I showed up a year or two ago on Game Night and the home team won. So my arrival time was OK after all.

Lynn picked me up. Then we went out to dinner at Tonic, a cool Downtown spot, where of course the Steelers game was playing in the background. Lynn seemed distracted. I did not take it personally. I knew I was visiting Steelers Nation and that this is how it goes.

That's how it kept going, too. At an Italian restaurant on Friday night, right after the 17,000th reference to the Steelers' victory, Lynn's mom Carol interrupted the ongoing post-post-post-game analysis to shoot me a sympathetic look and a reality check.

This wise woman said to me: "We will not stop talking about this game until the one next week." A fair and accurate warning.

It's different in New York. The great thing about my home city is that we have enough people to create a market for just about anything.

It's New York's lovely law of supply and demand. Generally, whatever your interest, we have at least a few thousand people in the five boroughs of New York who probably share it. So on the day I'm writing this, there are four different showings of "Some Like It Hot" at the Film Forum, but if it were playing in Pittsburgh, it would just be one showing at the Regent Square Theater.

I prefer the cultural abundance of New York, but your amazing city has other gifts. Like small-town enthusiasm played out on a grand scale.

You guys are pretty much all on the same team, whereas in New York we're sometimes dangerously divided between the Mets and the Yankees or the Rangers and the Islanders or the ... well, you get the idea. There are options, but with options comes the opportunity to root for so many other teams.

Or, God forbid, not to root at all. Lynn scared me a few years ago with a story about how, during a big playoff game, the Pittsburgh Symphony provided score updates during a Sunday matinee.

That's called being crazy about sports. So I think the Sporting News got it right. And the honor for Pittsburgh reminded me that there is an amazing team that I like rooting for, whether it's playing host to a global economic forum or showing off its stunning views or going completely nuts on Game Day: Pittsburgh.

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