THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: When your beloved team is suddenly sitting at home

So what do you do when the team you root for sees its season end sooner than you had hoped?

(Seahawks fans should be used to this, following their team's sixth straight premature exit from the postseason).

Do you keep watching, to see who ends up winning? Do you pull for the teams in your division/conference — or do you root for them to get clobbered even worse than your team did?

Or do you turn the TV off and wait 'til next year?

Me, I keep watching.

(Besides, how could you not enjoy Nickelodeon's telecast of last Sunday's Chicago-New Orleans playoff game? How often do you get to see a player get "slimed" when he scores a touchdown? I can't think of a good reason for the casual fan to watch the Bears play the Saints in the regular season — but make it a playoff game, with "slime" shooting out of the end zone pylons to celebrate a touchdown? Oh yeah!)

WHEN THE 49ers were out of it in the late 1960s, I would root for the Rams, partly because that was my brother's team, and partly because how could you not root for a quarterback named Roman Gabriel?

(Little did I know that, some two decades later, I would be standing some 10 feet from the former 49ers quarterback, watching him take a golf lesson at Avondale. Then, years later, having the chance to meet his sister.)

When the Rams were ousted, I rooted for the Packers --in the Ice Bowl, and through their victories in the first two Super Bowls.

(Little did I know that, after growing up reading books written by the right guard for the Packers, I would end up meeting the man and interviewing him several times over the years, and living in the town where he grew up, and still visits on occasion.)

So you never know.

THE TRAIL Blazers have only been in three NBA Finals, and their lone title came the year I graduated high school.

So there were a lot of springs rooting for the Lakers, with Magic and Kareem (and, before that, West and Wilt). Or the Bird/McHale/Parish Celtics. Or the Jordan/Pippen Bulls.

Even though we would have liked to see the Stockton-to-Malone Jazz win an NBA title, you had the feeling they weren't going to beat the Bulls the two times they met in the finals.

The basketball gods weren't going to let them. Or maybe it was MJ.

SAME WITH baseball.

I rooted for the Dodgers long before I lived in the town that housed the core or L.A.'s eventual standout teams of the 70s, while they were still in Triple-A.

I've rooted for the A's since their World Series three-peat in the 1970s. Maybe it was because they were the underdog. Maybe it was because they wore green and gold.

For some reason, I rooted for the A's over the Dodgers both times they met in the World Series. Don't tell my sister.

I rooted for the Miracle Mets of '69 and the juggernaut Mets of the mid-80s, but for some reason have little use for them now.

The Braves became a favorite in the 1980s because they were always on TV, and because Skip and Pete and Ernie were an entertaining listen.

"If you promise to patronize our sponsors," Skip would sometimes say in the late innings, when the Braves were way behind, "you have our permission to go walk the dog."

When the Braves played the Dodgers in the NLCS last fall, I rooted for the Dodgers because they needed to win a World Series to cap their recent run of success. Another year falling short, given their nucleus, would have been a disaster.

The Braves were in the NLCS for the first time in 19 years, so I figured losing wasn't going to kill them as much. They're young; they'll be back, I reasoned.

THERE WERE years where Zags fans had to decide whether to keep watching or commence with spring cleaning, after their lovable team endured an early exit from the NCAAs.

I get the feeling that's not going to be a problem this year.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.