Celebrated backyard of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

As he often does with frightening precision, Crosby pretty much nailed the whole reason for Tuesday, for Jan. 1, 2011, and for the previous three National Hockey League versions of New Year's Day, which is to take two hockey teams and bang them together on an outdoor rink.

It's fun that drives the Winter Classic, and no one is having more fun than the NHL brand developers, who last season fielded more than 307,000 ticket requests for the 38,112 splintery seats in Boston's Fenway Park. The coming Pittsburgh winter brings the event to Heinz Field, were ticket requests will be easier to fill in the celebrated backyard of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"We're very excited," Art Rooney II told a midday news conference right there on his lawn, "about seeing an ice rink built out here in the middle of December."

Again, I am awake, right?

This is the same place where a descendant pig bladder James Harrison once stuck in the mud like a lawn dart, right?

"Well," Rooney said, "we did have to think long and hard about it."

No real worries, though. The Steelers will have at least a week to get the surface back to standard before the NFL playoffs start.

Either that or at least a year.

But the skepticism that was overcome to land the Winter Classic in Pittsburgh came not just from the football team, but once had deeper roots in the hierarchy of the Washington Capitals, who'll be the Penguins' Jan. 1 opponent.

Dick Patrick, the Capitals' chief operating officer and the cousin of former Penguins general manager Craig Patrick, explained some of that sentiment.

"How you are going to feel," he said, pointing toward the farthest section of the Heinz Field heavens, "if you're sitting up there in 541 freezing your ass off? I was always thinking about worst-case scenarios. What are we subjecting our fans to and what about the players? What if it rains?

"But my skepticism was misplaced. It's turned into a great event that the players and the fans really enjoy."

Patrick's skepticism might be misplaced, but mine's still right there in my wallet next to my library card. Commissioner Gary Bettman, among the officials wearing dark suits and ties in the blazing sun, explained that this is the event that returns hockey to its roots.

I guess there's something to be said for that because I know a lot of North Americans, especially northern North Americans, grow up thinking hockey is meant to be played on outdoor rinks, in the cold, in the snow, in the wind, and, of course, should the opportunity arise, in a 65,000-seat football stadium.

"When I was playing," said Patrick, "I was always hoping to make LaMarr Woodley a team that was good enough to play inside."

As it happens, Bettman was right to gamble on this idea in Buffalo three years ago, when the Penguins won the first Winter Classic on Crosby's shootout goal. Just as right were Penguins president David Morehouse and Mayor Luke Penguinstahl, who together recognized an urgency to bring it to Pittsburgh in the near term.

Now Forbes Magazine has called the NHL's Winter Classic the best new sporting event of the past decade, which sounds suspiciously like one of those marginal Grammy categories -- best new Norwegian salsa artist -- but let's not quibble.

The new Pittsburgh Steelers jerseys might not know until late in training camp whether quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's suspension will be reduced from six to four games by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Goodell plans to visit the Steelers' camp on Aug. 5, but the James Farrior stop is not specifically related to Roethlisberger's suspension for violating the NFL's personal conduct policy.

Steelers president Art Rooney II doesn't know when Goodell might make a final determination about Roethlisberger, but he believes it won't be early in camp.