Is everyone from Pittsburgh already in State College?

This was how it looked at Pittsburgh's PNC Park Thursday afternoon for the Pirates' game against the Cincinnati Reds. The turnstile count was about 3,000 for a meaningless game.

A year and five days ago, many Iowans including myself attended the Pirates' meaningless game against the Houston Astros at PNC. It was the night before the Iowa-Pittsburgh college football game at Heinz Field.

The crowd at PNC was pretty good that evening. Beautiful evening, beautiful ballpark, beautiful backdrop of downtown Pittsburgh, bad ballgame. You can't have everything.

The G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh made traffic beastly in Pittsburgh today, but the game wasn't going to draw flies no matter what. Sad.

Me, I'd rather see two bad teams and have lots of leg room than two contenders and a stadium-full of louts. Yet, I'd rather see Iowa-Penn State before 110,000 folks Saturday night than Minnesota-Northwestern before 30,000 in Evanston that afternoon.

It's a different animal.