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Canines Crowd Steeler Nation

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By JANINE DORSEY

jdorsey@tbo.com

Published: January 30, 2009

TAMPA - Super Bowl fever is swallowing Tampa, it seems, to the point you can't enter a grocery store without being confronted by a football stadium made with canned chili.

So this press release came as no surprise: "Steelers Beat Cardinals in Super Bowl Pet Name Competition."

The "highly scientific" analysis of a national database of insured pets gives a decided edge to animals named after all things Steelers: the team name, nickname and some select player and coach names.

Released by VPI Pet Insurance, the study found that among the 467,000 pets in the database, twice as many have names derived from the Pittsburgh Steelers as from the Arizona Cardinals.

A combined 159 pets were found to have the names "Roethlisberger," "Polamalu," "Bettis," and a few others. "Steely" or "Steelers" was also a popular choice.

By comparison, the Cardinals only had a pet-name fan base of 76 animals, with "Tillman" - like Pat Tillman, the former Cardinal turned Army Ranger who was killed during battle in Afghanistan - the most popular at 35 entries.

"While the exact inspiration for any pet name may be impossible to determine, there's no doubt the Steeler Nation made a more pronounced impact on pet names in 2008," said Brian Iannessa of VIP Pet Insurance.

The trend holds true in an analysis of the Bay area pet name database created by TBO.com. Applying the same select criteria as VPI used, Pittsburgh names outrank Arizona names 154 to 142.

The spread would have been wider if the Cardinals didn't have the advantage of "Big Red" as a mascot name, with 83 Polk, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties pets carrying that moniker.

Clearly, this is a favorite among a cross-section of Irish Setters, not just fans of the improbable Super Bowl contenders from the desert.

To do your own analysis, or to see how popular your pet's name is, visit TBO.com, Keyword: "Pet Names." Producer Janine Dorsey can be reached at (813) 259-8015

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