There's no shame in being less popular than the beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, who are seeking an unprecedented sixth Super Bowl title on Sunday. But for a major league baseball team to acknowledge it has slipped behind an NHL team in its marketplace is nearly unprecedented, except perhaps in Canada.

"Obviously given that we've had a lack of success on the field over an extended period of time, the Steelers and Penguins are very popular now," Coonelly said during a talk to business students at Penn State, his alma mater. "We are clearly third in the marketplace in terms of the mindset of where we are as an organization."

Coonelly was answering a question from the moderator, Smeal College of Business dean James Thomas, about whether he viewed the city's other pro franchises as competitors in the marketplace, or whether there was cooperation between the teams.

"We're working hard to get ourselves back up to where we belong both in Major League Baseball and Pittsburgh," he said.

The Pirates finished last in the NL Central in 2008, during their record-tying 16th consecutive losing season, while the Steelers are perennial winners and the Penguins reached the Stanley Cup finals last spring.

If the Pirates have another losing season, they will own the longest consecutive run of such seasons in major American pro sports history - a stretch of losing that has affected their status in the community. They have yet to have a winning season since opening much-praised PNC Park in 2001.

Another new building - the under-construction Penguins arena - also poses a threat to the Pirates from a business standpoint, Coonelly said.

Leaders from the city's pro sports franchises, as well as the University of Pittsburgh, meet periodically to talk about bringing special events to town, Coonelly said.

It's a task that Coonelly hopes will become even easier when the Penguins' new arena - the Consol Energy Center - opens in 2010-11.

But that also could pose a fiscal challenge to the Pirates, especially if the economy remains in recession. Coonelly considers the arena a bigger hurdle than the ever-popular Steelers, partly because the Pirates play 81 home games, the Penguins 41 and the Steelers only eight.

"Particularly in these difficult economic times, asking a corporation to pony up a large sponsorship with the Pirates, and a large sponsorship with the Penguins, could be difficult," he said.

And when the Penguins advance deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs, that adds more competition for ticket dollars.

Coonelly joined the franchise in 2007 after a stint as Major League Baseball's senior vice president and chief labor counsel. He is a native of Philadelphia, but knows all about the troubles the Pirates have had in fielding a winning team.

"We live in a passionate sports city, a passionate sports region," he said. "The greatest challenge is figuring out on very limited resources - much more limited than some other clubs ... how to build a winning team."

Coonelly doesn't want to build a one-year wonder, referring to how the Florida Marlins won World Series titles in 1997 and 2003, only to return to a rebuilding mode the season after each championship.

More recently though, teams like Tampa Bay - which lost the World Series to the Phillies last year - have proven that small-market teams can compete by building through the farm system.

Coonelly said the Pirates are starting from "way behind, because when we came in a little over year ago, it's fair to say - and all the publications ranked us this way - we had one of the weakest minor league systems in major league baseball."

"Our fans deserve to rebuild a team that can consistently compete," he said. "That's really the only way we can develop a winner, by developing our own."

Coonelly spoke the same day that the Pirates made two moves, signing left-hander Paul Maholm to a three-year contract and utility player Eric Hinske to a one-year deal.