Taking the frustration further, neither the Cincinnati Reds nor Cleveland Indians finished the Baseball season with a winning record. Giving credit where it's due, the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers lead their division, but even that comes with baggage as the franchise can't escape speculation that LeBron James will leave for New York in 2010.

And lest we forget, the Bearcats are playing in a BCS bowl game. But it speaks to Cincinnati's car-over-the-cliff outlook when its college football team could clock its NFL one.

So we look north and see a city hanging lifelessly from its rust belt, look south and shudder. Luckily for Ohio, there is Columbus -- the cream that has risen above the crud.

In a nutshell:

* In winning the MLS Cup, the Crew became Ohio's first champion in a "major-league" pro sport since the Reds won the 1990 World Series. It was nice to hear Crew defender Frankie Hejduk say, "This is for Columbus" after the team won last week. Haven't heard "This is for Cleveland" or "This is for Cincinnati" in quite a while.

* It's December and the Blue Jackets actually have a winning record (11-10-3). Can't say that about the Browns (4-8) or Bengals (1-10-1). Moreover, the Jackets appear to be tracking upward, or at least not downward, while the Browns and Bengals are as hapless as ever.

* Ohio State is 10-2, co-champion of the Big Ten and likely will be selected as an at-large pick for a BCS bowl. The Buckeyes also have the state's last big-school national championship (2002).

Some argue that OSU does not belong to Columbus but to the entire state. Pish. Let fans and alumni from outside the capital claim the Buckeyes as their own, but the university is located here, not there.

Face it: If we're going to advertise Ohio as a state for winners, then we must market Columbus first and foremost.

That "Count on Columbus" campaign won't sit well in Cleveland or Cincinnati, but so what? Win something for a change, then crow about your teams. The Big Red Machine revved more than 30 years ago. Jim Brown retired more than 40 years ago. Columbus is winning now.

"There's total frustration up here," said Sam Maniar, a sports and business consultant in Cleveland who formerly worked as a sports psychologist at Ohio State. "It's been 1948 since the Indians (won a World Series). It was pre-Super Bowl when the Browns last won a championship. The Cavs have never done it."

Yet Cleveland still considers itself the premier sports city in the state, Maniar said.

"Cleveland fans do see Cleveland as the superior sports city," he said. "I don't think Columbus is considered a sports town by people outside Columbus, because there is no pro football or Baseball."

The counterargument is that Columbus is not considered a losing sports town by people outside of Cleveland, or outside Ohio for that matter.

Cincinnati has its own issues -- namely, an utter hopelessness that the Bengals will ever be anything other than a laughingstock.

"People are totally fed up, not just mad but apathetic," said Paul Daugherty, a sports columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer who also hosts a sports talk radio show on WLW. "People are e-mailing me to stop writing about them and calling to say they feel bad for me that I have to talk about the Bengals. The only reason I do it is to vent my spleen and keep myself from getting ulcers and to give the fans whatever small voice they think they have."

Basically, "it just sucks here," he said.

My advice to Daugherty and all others who need a championship city to call home? Claim Columbus as your own. We wear winning colors, not paper bags.

Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.

roller@dispatch.com