There are the big three, of course -- the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates.

Beyond that you could fill a book with pro and semipro teams that have jogged through Pittsburgh over the years. Whether anyone would want to read that tome would be another question. If we weren't interested enough to fight to keep our second-tier teams, we probably wouldn't be too keen on recounting their history.

There are still a few such teams calling this area home. Besides the pleasingly successful Washington Wild Things of independent baseball, the scaled-down Riverhounds of soccer, the resilient Colts of semipro football and the fan-hungry Xplosion of basketball are among those still toiling.

A quick review of some bygone teams, in case anyone forgot (and surely there are others forgotten from this list):

Indoor roller hockey.

Junior hockey.

Indoor lacrosse.

Team tennis.

Indoor soccer.

Outdoor soccer.

Minor-league baseball.

Basketball many times over.

Outdoor naked duckpin bowling.

OK, that last one was made up. We think.

Some had lives so fleeting they were pro tem more than pro team.

Perhaps the regret we should have is that we lost indoor football more than 20 years ago. The Gladiators might still be going strong, considering how well Arena Football has done recently.

This is such a huge Steelers town that there is a strong trickle-down effect. Lower-level football probably has a better chance of surviving and even thriving than other sports.

That's one reason a couple local athletes-turned-entrepreneurs are taking a chance on launching a second women's football team.

The Pittsburgh Passion drilled themselves into our conscience to some extent by going from the formative stages in 2002 to beginning play in '03 to going undefeated in eight regular-season games and through four rounds of the playoffs to win the National Women's Football Association championship last summer.

After they stormed through 2007, the Passion jumped to the Independent Women's Football League -- much to the dismay of the NWFA.

That gave Kathy Ferrari and Felicia Mycyk an idea.

The two once formed a strong corner tandem for the Passion. Now they are forming an NWFA replacement for that club.

Ferrari and Mycyk are co-owners of the Pittsburgh Force, which will begin play in 2009.

So while the Passion opens the 2008 season in its new league April 19 and will have its four home games televised on a tape-delay basis by FSN Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Force will be in its infancy.

"The opportunity came up when they decided to leave the league," said Ferrari, a 15-year postal employee who holds the Passion record for longest reception, 74 yards, before she switched to defense.

They contacted NWFA founder and CEO Catherine Masters.

"She was happy when we called her. She said, 'I don't want to lose the Pittsburgh market,' " said Mycyk, general manager for a manufacturer's representative agency.

The two women have a lot of work to do to pull this off.

They hope to find a field in Beaver County to use for home games. They are in the process of lining up a coaching staff -- they have some people in mind but are being tight-lipped about it. They are courting sponsors. And they are setting the logistics for a series of player tryouts.

It's an ambitious undertaking, and it's not as if these two women have nothing else going on in their lives.

Ferrari cares for her mother, Linda, 60, who has been paralyzed since an accident in 2002 and was her daughter's biggest fan with the Passion.

Mycyk and her husband, Nate, have two daughters, with a boy due in July. She is pursuing a master's degree in business, chairs a flood recovery group called ARISE, serves as a high school mentor and on the board for the Girl Scouts, is active in the PTA and promotes local musicians. Among other things.

"We all have 24 hours," Mycyk said. "If I can spend my lunch hour or an hour here or an hour there doing things, then it's easy."

But can this area, with its local venues littered with failed and folded franchises, support a second women's football team?

Ferrari and Mycyk are convinced it can.

Since they got a pinch of publicity from a news release earlier this week announcing the team, they have gotten several e-mails from prospective players (that's www.pittsburghforce@gmail.com).

"It's time for more younger girls and new girls to have a chance to play," Ferrari said.

It is, after all, football, and this is, after all, Western Pennsylvania.