It's October in New York and, once again, in terms of sports, we might as well be on Mars

The Jets are a lost Malaysisan airliner. Last Sunday, the Giants played with the nervousness of Sayreville, N.J., incoming freshmen. The Knicks are - well - the Knicks. The Rangers stick their nose above sea level once every 20 years. The Mets are still recovering from Carlos Beltran taking strike three - right down the middle. And the Yankees - once the pride of Gotham - are stricken by the incurable ailment known as Steinbrenner Syndrome.

It's autum in New York, a great time for cryogenic suspension.

But why, why, WHY are NYC sports so rancid? Why does Boston get the Celtics, Patriots, Redsocks and Bruins, while New Yorkers actually ponder Syracuse as a home town college team? Why does San Francisco have the Giants and 49ers, while we have the Giants and the 13s?

Seriously. Anybody out there know? I've spent the better part of the last five minutes mulling this. Here are my guesses.

1. Pro sports owner communism. All pro teams are owned by Ayn Rand capitalists, who run their leagues like Che Guevara. Their goal is always to achieve parity, and the first salvo in that campaign is to crush any NYC-based teams, so they cannot exploit their advantage in market size. If you can't exploit your market advantage - well - then it becomes a disadvantage. If everything is equal, you have a better chance of winning in a small city, where the players have nothing else to do but chase personel records for their bench presses.

2. Obsessed wacko nutjob loonpie fans. NYC has at least 1 million drooling, loopy fans who a) make crappy players and midling prospects think they are Gods or b) scare the living hell out of star athletes. Whenever they talk about Jeter's greatness, they note that he kept his bearings while playing in New York. If he'd gone 20 years in Cleveland, would he simply be Omar Vizquel with better hair?

3. Hot and aggressively horny babes. Once the dairy princesses and prom queens, fresh off the bus from Ashtabula, realize they're not going to be Broadway's next Neil Patrick Harris, they quickly move to Plan B: Bed down some pro athlete and turn his powerful bat into Pad Thai. What really happened to Kevin Maas? (Without whom we would not have a great Yankee site in his honor.)

4. Water supply, air quality, proximity to Indian River nuke plant. Is NYC on a methane vent? Sometimes, it smells that way.

5. Yahweh pissed. NYC is, after all, Gomorrah on the Hudson. Half the Arab world still thinks God orchestrated the 9-11 attacks because Mayor Dinkins went easy on the squeegie guys. The Bible thumpers blame it on Rosie O'Donnell. Maybe God is taking it out on Brian McCann?

6. Best street drugs. Nah. Then why did Miami win in the NBA?

7. Bagels. Could there something in the delicate nutritional make-up of this magnificent New York delicacy, which undermines a highly tuned athlete's peak performance? Sometimes, after my fourth bagel, I do feel a tad gassy.

8. Keith Olbermann. Every NYC pro athlete knows he or she must face the ultimate scrutiny.

9. Owner incompetence. Let's face it: The owners of NYC sports teams are second or third generation pinheads, who make just as much money when their teams lose. I'm wondering if there isn't some inbreeding here? Could old George have had a secret affair with one of the Dolans, spawning Hank? Just asking.

10. Random sequence. We're simply talking about a small sample size (Note: On the River Ave site, this is referred to as "SSS"). If you wait a million years, NYC sports will probably rise. It just won't happen in our lifetimes, or our kids' lifetimes, or our grandkids' lifetimes. Somewhere out there, in the year 2525 - if man is still alive - a scrappy Steinbrennerian seed will find purchase in a fertile Zuckerman egg, and the ghosts of today's Yankee fanbase will enjoy the fruits of today's earthly torment. And I bet their kid will have flippers the size of surfboards.

Enough reason to consider cryonic suspension, eh?