This has certainly been an interesting week for the sports desk at the Independent Record.

When I picked up my paper on Tuesday morning and read the headline one of my reporters, Mark Vinson, had chosen for his column (Are we spoiled? Yeah, but at least we're not Butte), I figured the phones to be ringing off the hook and the online comments to be going through the roof.

The column pointed out the recent successes Helena teams have had over the last few years, from Carroll College's multiple Frontier Conference football titles, to the Helena Bighorns' equal success in the NorPac Hockey League and even Matt Barker's individual title at the Class AA state cross-country championships.

All of which are incredible feats worth mentioning.

His column pointed out how spoiled we are in Helena that a near-loss in any competition draws disappointment from our crowds. That we should be happy to win, and not just happy because we didn't lose.

It's a common theme played out all across the world. Success drives more success, and when fans get used to winning, expectations are always increasing.

Carroll head football coach Mike Van Diest, after winning five of the last seven NAIA national championships, isn't just expected to have a winning season anymore, but to go perfectly for 15 weeks and bring the trophy home to the Capital City.

The same goes for other great coaches like Urban Meyer at Florida, Phil Jackson with the L.A. Lakers or Bobby Hauck at Montana.

The pressure to produce can become particularly hard on high school teams, like Capital and Helena High, who have seen incredible success and are made up of players that are as young as 14 years old and weren't even on the teams that preceded them.

I can assure you, after covering the Saints the past four years, no one holds a powerhouse team to higher standards than the players and the coaches themselves. And while I've never met more supportive fans than those attending Carroll games - for any sport in any venue - even they can be harsh in their criticism.

I remember writing stories during the 2007 season about former Saints quarterback John Barnett, who had the unfortunate duty of following up two-time NAIA Player of the Year Tyler Emmert. Emmert had engineered much of the Saints' success - injury kept him off the field for the playoffs in 2002 - on their way to four straight national titles.

All Barnett had done in 2006 was take the Saints to the quarterfinals and an impressive 11-2 record. During the season, he often heard the criticisms from the crowd and comparisons to his predecessor, which were simply unfair.

I think Saints fans learned a lesson shortly after when Barnett, perhaps the toughest quarterback in Saints history, limped his way to a national title the next season despite having a knee injury that required surgery.

Carroll felt another blow the next season, when two quarterbacks were injured on the way to a loss to another perennial powerhouse, the University of Sioux Falls (S.D.), at the title game in Rome, Ga. When Dane Broadhead and then Matt Ritter took over the helm, I saw an immediate response that negated everything that had happened when Barnett took over. Players, coaches and diehard fans rallied around their true freshman quarterbacks, never wavering in their support, no matter how much some detractors - and the IR is guilty of poking and prodding a little bit - might have questioned who should be playing at the position.

Now, back to the controversy in Tuesday's column.

It is no doubt in bad taste to prop up one team's successes by showing another's failures. And for that, we apologize to all the Butians in the world.

Vinson, a recent addition and now immense fan of the Queen City's sports programs, was trying to show how lucky we are by comparing the Helena area's successes to those of another city. And who better to pick on than a city whose teams are inevitably our biggest rivals?

He mentioned how local teams were 10-0 against their nearest competitors, and pointed out how Butte fans are happy just to get a win - something none of us should take for granted.

As I had suspected, Vinson's column drew a number of phone calls, some complimenting him for recognizing such outstanding performances, others angry for dissing the Mining City.

And while I shudder at a few responses that are a bit overblown - "Send him packing! Cancel my subscription! Collect all the pitchforks and torches, let's get 'em!" - for one column, I do see an incredible amount of good that has already come from it.

For starters, it has rallied support for Butte teams, led by one of its native sons and most ardent supporters, Montana Standard sportswriter Pat Ryan.

In an excellent column Wednesday, Ryan reflected on the incredible success of some of his town's best athletes, from professionals like cyclist Levi Leipheimer and football player Colt Anderson, to the high school ranks like the second-place Butte High girls basketball team. He also gave a good glimpse of how sports can be a lift when a town sees hard times, like the way Jim Street coached the Bulldogs wrestling team to a state title after the mines closed in the early 1980s. The team continued like that for 10 years.

It would do everyone good to read the column, so please check it out at the Standard's Web site at: www.mtstandard.com/articles/2009/11/04/sports/hjjaiijfjchifb.txt

It is often hard to determine how a sports writer can positively affect his community. News writers are complimented as the hard-edged combatants for justice in a world that often wants to silence those that go against the establishment.

We sports writers can only hope that our articles and columns might inspire others to greatness. That they encourage the youth around us to get off their butts and out on the fields, courts and ice rinks so that they might enjoy some exercise with their best friends. And, that they even get a few of the waning numbers of young readers interested in newspapers again (don't think we couldn't tell a number of our callers' voices broke during the messages).

In Vinson's case, I think he has done all three of those things for the cities of Butte and Helena, even if it means he has to be the bad guy.

We hope, from all of this, a friendly rivalry that has been lopsided recently will return to the great competition it once was - by far the best in the state and possibly even the country.

Sports Editor Jeff Windmueller: 447-4065 or jeff.windmueller@helenair.com

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• Are we spoiled? Yeah, but at least we're not Butte