Here in Florida, we love a recount. That’s why it’s time for ESPN, The Sporting News and everyone else who has conducted a “Title Town” poll recently to reconsider its choices.

Tampa Bay is Title Town.

True, Tampa Bay isn’t even a city. That might be why the national media seems confused when it comes to our community. WTBS broadcasters alone made dozens of references to the Rays as “Tampa” during the first two rounds of playoffs.

When teams travel to Florida to face the Rays, they don’t “go to Tampa.” After their charters land in St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport, they bus to a downtown St. Pete hotel and face the Rays at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg – more than 15 miles from Tampa, across the eight-mile Howard Frankland Bridge.

The all-Tampa Bay World Series will, if nothing else, serve as a geography lesson. Admittedly, the University of South Florida’s upstart football team has added to the confusion. (USF is far from Miami in Tampa, with a growing satellite campus in St. Pete, not far from Tropicana Field.)

Let’s take a look at the Sunshine State. Florida is shaped like a handgun, with Pinellas County the trigger. Pinellas is home to both the Rays (St. Pete) and the Philadelphia Phillies, who have trained in Clearwater for the last 61 years.

Ed Goren and the folks at Fox Sports view this World Series as the Watch-the-Ratings-Fall Classic, but it’s time they embrace the reality that Tampa Bay has been the center of the sports universe for the last six or eight years.

When it comes to deciding big events, nowhere is more important than Tampa Bay. That’s why for three presidential elections now, candidates have visited more often than Carl Pavano on injury rehab stints.

Barack Obama understands the importance of Tampa Bay and sports. Three weeks ago he spoke in Dunedin in the spring training ballpark of the Toronto Blue Jays. Two weeks ago Sarah Palin addressed the masses in Clearwater, not far from the Phillies’ complex. Last week, Obama returned and spoke at Steinbrenner Field, spring training home of the New York Yankees.

Since 2002, no other market can boast of a Super Bowl champion, Stanley Cup winner and World Series participant (and possible winner). New York, with its many teams, has just one major sports title to show for the Bush administration.

If Gainesville is considered part of the extended market, which it often is around here, then Tampa Bay also can boast of a pair of NCAA basketball championships and a BCS football title. If the Gators are not counted, then there are the South Florida Bulls, who have appeared in The Associated Press top 10 in each of the last two seasons. Not bad for a program that began one year before the Devil Rays.

Admittedly, Tampa Bay also is the de facto home of the Yankees, who play their spring training games in George Steinbrenner’s longtime hometown of Tampa, where the Buccaneers and Lightning also play. The Yanks haven’t done much since Bill Clinton left office. But that should not count against the market, which is happy to let longtime resident Derek Jeter call Tampa Bay home, at least as much as he’s allowed to by the IRS.

Now before Boston fans scream Belichick, Tampa Bay’s many other contributions to the national sports landscape should be noted, starting with food.

Outback Steakhouse began in Tampa, along with its subsidiaries Carraba’s Italian Grill and The Bonefish Grill. Outback was founded by Chris Sullivan and Bob Basham, who were limited partners in the former Devil Rays. They grew so frustrated with former head guy Vince Naimoli that they sold their shares to Stuart Sternberg, who later bought Naimoli’s controlling interest and pointed the franchise in the right direction.

Then there’s Hooters, founded in Clearwater in 1983. The last time the Phillies were in the World Series, Darren Daulton and original Hooters girl Lynne Austin were still married. Lynne’s now a sports talk show host here while Dutch is occasionally seen around town muttering about metaphysics and the end of the world. Given the global economy and the Rays season, the former Devil Rays bullpen coach is starting to make a lot of sense.

Earlier this month Hooters threw its 25th anniversary bash. John Daly showed up, sitting mostly alone in a booth hawking autographed photos for $25 while a line of people waited for free signatures from the Hooters calendar girls.

In this economy, the World Series is going to be a huge boost to area restaurants. You know who’s really pumped? The folks who operate the four Frenchy’s Restaurants on Clearwater Beach. During spring training, sportswriters account for much of Frenchy’s beer sales. Now the entire baseball media will descend like Xerxes’ hordes through the hot gates.

We’re not much of a basketball town here, but Matt Geiger no doubt will be welcoming some of his Philly friends back this week. The Pinellas County native, who somehow talked the 76ers into giving him a $52 million contract in 2001, now owns two popular “Courtside Grille” restaurants.

Geiger also is a big-time real estate developer who lives in a 26,000-square-foot house that in the movie “The Punisher” served as the home of a villain played by John Travolta. If you missed “The Punisher,” that’s understandable. It was sort of the Matt Geiger of action movies.

There’s some debate over who has the biggest house in Pinellas County: Geiger or Hulk Hogan, whose home near downtown Clearwater was the site of the reality show “Hogan Knows Best.” The Hulkster (ne Terry Bollea) has fallen on hard times lately, going through a divorce and watching his 18-year-old son, Nick, serve an eight-month jail sentence for felony reckless driving stemming from an accident last year that left a passenger seriously injured and possibly confined to a nursing home for the rest of his life.

Hulk has been a regular at Rays’ games during the playoffs. Thankfully, the Rays haven’t followed the lead of the Lightning and brought his daughter, Brooke, out to “sing” the national anthem.

Indeed, Tropicana Field has become hallowed ground this year, with the Rays virtually unbeatable. One theory for the advantage is that opponents still treat visits to Tampa Bay as they did when facing the hapless Devil Rays, basking in the sun all morning alongside a hotel pool made famous by Brian McNamee and a female companion, and staying out all night at Tampa’s legendary Mons Venus men’s club.

The Mons, which popularized the full-friction lapdance, stayed open around-the-clock during the Final Four in 1999 and Super Bowl in 2001, and no doubt will attract crowds this week.

Speaking of the Big Game, Tampa Bay in February will become just the third market to host the Super Bowl following the World Series – and potentially the only community other than Minneapolis (1991-92) to do so following a World Series championship.

Tampa’s fourth Super Bowl week will be an exciting time.

But first Title Town needs to decide a World Series – and possibly an election.