Greetings Helena!

I've always thought of the sports section of a local paper to be a personal friend to readers, so I thought I'd introduce myself as the IR's new sports editor.

I'm Cliff Pfenning from Portland, Ore., and I know a helluva lot more about sports than you.

At least I think I do.

The NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, even MLS, I got those covered. The NCAA, the PGA Tour, the ATP Tour, NASCAR, especially NASCAR. I got those covered, too.

I'm personally devoted to the Los Angeles Dodgers, University of Oregon and Steve Garvey getting into the baseball Hall of Fame.

I've lived in Nike country forever, so I have trends in athletic fashions down pretty well, including the UO's unique black lettering on black uniforms for men's basketball last season.

And, don't try to work me on

revenue sharing or the salary caps for the leagues that use them. I've been a subscriber to Sports Business Journal for five years and am slowly working on an ESPN-based business degree in sports marketing.

I don't, though, own Carroll College or the big Helena High vs. Capital High rivalry, but that's on the way. I'm still getting up to speed on the Big Sky (it didn't really rock the sports world over in Portland) and the level of junior hockey where the Bighorns play.

And, I don't own Montana, yet.

Moving from a metropolis to … an anti-metropolis is the real adventure that I'm working to own, especially when the anti-metropolis is in Montana. I got a lot of interesting questions about the state when the news of the move leaked out:

"How many people are in Montana?"

"What's the capital?"

"Are there more cows there than people?"

And, a memorable comment from my little sister; "you know, if you work there, you have to live there, too."

Montana didn't exactly jump off the map when managing editor John Doran started the free agent process of luring me to Helena, but that didn't take long to change nn via the Internet, of course.

Helena hit the national blotter on Yahoo as being a top small city to live in almost as soon as we ended our first conversation. The school district's quality played a big part in that listing. The downtown district is being revitalized. Carroll College's reputation in athletics showed up quickly. The city is home to a minor league baseball team and a well-attended junior hockey team. Residents recently passed a bond measure to renovate and improve facilities for athletics and family activities.

Helena has Home Depot and Lowes, or Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson as I view them.

And, the city has two brew pubs.

The same week of checking into Montana's background also brought up a story about residents actively pursuing a younger drinking age, which I view as being progressive. The bond measure for facilities is progressive as well.

When my wife and I drove over for a closer inspection and teamed the city with the multimedia direction of the IR, we kept using the word progressive, which is the kind of place I want to raise my family.

As we looked at Helena, we also looked back at Portland, starting with the facilites bond measure. Such a bond measure would never pass because the people who'd have to invent it and put it onto a ballot are just too scared of losing, so it would never get invented. None of the pro teams in the city are owned by Oregonians. There's a large daily newspaper, but its sports department doesn't even send a reporter to cover the city's Triple A baseball team.

And, there's the unofficial town motto, "Keep Portland Weird."

The sports scene has worked its way into that motto. The Portland Winter Hawks were bought a couple years ago by a New Yorker who ran the team into the ground so thoroughly the league nearly took the franchise over. That's weird.

Just a few years ago, the Portland Trail Blazers allowed their home arena, the Rose Garden, to go into bankruptcy because they argued they couldn't pay the high rent they invented when they financed the construction of the stadium in 1992. The team is, of course, owned by billionaire Paul Allen, who also owns the Seattle Seahawks. That's weird, too.

It took a week of research and a weekend visit for Helena to look pretty attractive as a place to live and work, so I gave the go-ahead for my agent to work on signing a contract.

That's when I started into the process of giving the town a motto to make it really come alive.

"Keep Helena Brewing."

I look at brewing nn Portland is home to dozens of microbreweries nn as a process of trial and error that invents something memorable, and often very tasty.

"Keep Helena Brewing" is my motto for the IR's sports section.

We're going to expand our efforts to brew up a tasty sports section on a daily basis, especially with local content. It helps if there's a little advance warning on upcoming events, but we're a mobile department with a lineup just waiting to emerge from the lockerroom and play its way to glory.

If you've got events we should know about, send us some contact information. If you've got a great photo of a youth league event, send us that, too.

Heck, if you want to see your name in the paper, send us an e-mail along with something that makes you interesting and we'll work you in. That might end up as the error part of the process, but we'll try it once.

There's a lot of drama involved with moving a family to a new town, especially from a town that's more populated than an entire state. But, drama is a key part of any sporting event or team and it certianly makes life interesting.

So, there's a little pimping of the IR's new sports editor, who's pumped about moving to a smaller, more interesting market and owning it as soon as possible.

Sports Editor Cliff Pfenning:

447-4070 or cliff.pfenning@helenair.com