01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Two games, two different realities:

The Patriots played Tampa Bay on Saturday afternoon at Gillette Stadium, a game complete with a media blitz. In Sunday's Journal alone, half the front sports page was devoted to it, plus four inside pages. Four.

The Celtics played the Bulls on Saturday night in Chicago, a game that got nine paragraphs in Sunday's Journal.

What to make of this?

The most obvious, certainly, is that there is incredibly more interest in the Pats playing Tampa Bay in December than the Celtics playing the Bulls in December. No argument there. Another obvious impression is that there's more interest in a regular-season NFL game -- given the fact there's only 16 of them -- than there is in an NBA game, where there's 82 of them.

But it's more than that.

Much more.

It's the growing perception that the Celtics -- and the Bruins, too -- no longer count, at least not in ways they once did. That more and more there's the feeling that there really is no winter season on the Bosron professional sports scene, at least not in the way there used to be.

Once upon a time, it was different. Once upon a time, the Bruins ruled the Boston winter, right there with their sellouts in the old Boston Garden, and the legacies of Orr and Esposito, Bourque and Neely. Once upon a time, the Bruins were the Garden gods, a hockey team in a hockey town.

Once upon a time, the Celtics were the best team in basketball. Three times, actually. One was the stretch from 1957 to 1969, when they were the most successful franchise in the history of American sport, winning nine titles in 11 years. One was the two titles in the mid '70s. The other was the height of the Bird era in the mid-'80s, arguably the glory days of the NBA. And if the greats of the '50s and '60s rarely sold out, if even then Boston never was a great basketball town, there was a certain reverence about the Celtics then, an appreciation for how good they were.

That was only reinforced during the Bird era, when the Celtics often seemed like the only team in town during those long months when winter grabbed Boston like a vice, and the most pressing sports question seemed to be who was better, the Celtics or the Lakers, Magic or Bird? The Celtics were an event then, with a season that went into June, turning Boston into the kind of basketball town it never had been before.

Ah, but that was long ago and far away.

Back when the Red Sox were the most popular franchise in town, followed by the Celtics and Bruins, with the Pats a distant fourth.

Now?

Now both the Celtics and Bruins often appear as little more than blips on the sports radar screen, both buried under the incredible appeal of both the Red Sox and the Patriots. Sometimes the blip is big, and sometimes it's small. In the end, though, it's still a blip.

Maybe it's inevitable, what happens when the Red Sox are only a year away from winning their first world title in 86 years, the Pats have won three of the last four Super Bowls, and both the Bruins and the Celtics seem stuck on some treadmill to nowhere.

You can hear that in the calls to sports talk shows. You can hear the talk in offices. It's all about the Patriots. All about the Red Sox. These are the two teams that get the buzz.

The Celtics and the Bruins?

Buzzless.

The Red Sox have become a virtual year-round enterprise, what with the winter meetings and an offseason Hot Stove League that burns brighter than it ever did in the past. If you didn't know any better, you would think the Red Sox are just one big season, going 'round and 'round, one big circle.

The Super Bowl now goes into February, and for the fourth time in the last five years, the Patriots are assured of playing in January. For years, the Patriots were an anomaly, a franchise that never seemed to capitalize on the tremendous popularity of the NFL across the country. Now, all that sounds inconceivable, as outdated as the old stadium that hugged Route 1 like some old barnacle on a dock. Now the Patriots own the winter in ways that once were unimaginable.

Is it any wonder that there's no real winter sports scene in Boston anymore?

Is it any wonder the Celtics and Bruins too often seem like jayvee teams, something to pay attention to only when the big boys aren't playing?

So both the Celtics and Bruins now find themselves in a certain limbo, their seasons being played to the sound of one-hand clapping. And we find ourselves without a professional winter sports scene.