Howard Dolgon knows the score.

He knew it even before he announced last week that unless 5,000 paying customers attend Saturday's Syracuse Smash-Pittsburgh CrossFire box lacrosse game in the Onondaga County War Memorial, the city's only major-league professional sports franchise will pack up and leave town.

"The results have been in for 2½ years," the Smash owner said earlier this week. "It's not like the organization's holding a gun to the city's head. It just might not be a good fit."

The outspoken Dolgon avoids understatement. Saying pro lacrosse in Syracuse "might not be a good fit," though, qualifies.

Dolgon, who doubles as the president of the Syracuse Crunch - the city's American Hockey League franchise - and owner of the National Lacrosse League's Smash, is a member of a successful sports marketing firm in Manhattan.

The Smash has been a marketing nightmare. Here are some key factors that have put it on the brink of leaving town:

Wrong assumption: Field lacrosse is popular in Central New York, Long Island and Maryland, which suggests that those areas would support the professional box game. It hasn't happened.

The Smash is on the verge of folding, the Baltimore franchise moved to Pittsburgh in the off-season and the New York Saints, based in Long Island, are sixth in the eight-team league in attendance.

"What we're finding around the NLL is that cities with strong allegiance to the field game don't really like the box game," Rochester Knighthawks owner Steve Donner said. "That is something that is becoming clearer. As we look to expand, we are looking more carefully into markets without that fervor for the outdoor game."

Without outdoor lacrosse fervor spilling into the box game, Syracuse was in deep trouble from the start. Its arena, the War Memorial, holds roughly 5,000 fewer seats (6,230) than the league's next-smallest arena, Rochester's Blue Cross Arena (11,200). If Syracuse sold out every game this season, it would rank fifth out of eight teams in attendance.

"We are the smallest market to ever come into the league," Dolgon said. "The game has failed in much larger cities than this one."

Detroit, Boston and Charlotte, to name a few of the failures. Still, the direction of the league is toward larger cities unfamiliar with the field game. Columbus, Ohio, and Detroit (again) are likely expansion sites. Montreal, Quebec City and Chicago are also mentioned frequently. In major-league cities, where it can cost $75 a ticket to see an NHL or NBA game, $22.50 to see pro lacrosse is a bargain.

Yet, the game is an acquired taste, and most field fans find it unappetizing. Fireworks, loud rock music and crushing body checks are elements that give the NLL a professional wrestling flavor.

Wrong city to copy: Dolgon looked to the west and the success that Donner, his good friend and fellow NLL founder, was enjoying in Rochester. Tickets there cost up to $23.50, and 8,000-plus have no problem forking it over to see their team.

Dolgon looked at his small arena here and did likewise, charging up to $22.50 for a ticket in the team's first season, and potential fans said no way. He got the message quickly and adjusted prices midway through that season, but by then the team was losing and the bad first impression stuck.

For Saturday's game, all tickets will cost $10.

"We want to create every favorable position possible to draw the highest number of customers so that pricing cannot be an excuse for a less than desired fan turnout," Dolgon said.

Is $10 to see an 0-10 team that has lost its last three games by a combined score of 61-25 a bargain? The fans will decide.

In retrospect, Dolgon picked the wrong city to emulate. Rochester is not a college town. Its minor-league baseball and hockey teams are popular. The folks who renovated the city's Blue Cross Arena did it right. It is minor league in seating capacity only. Otherwise, it has all the amenities of a major-league arena.

Plus, Rochester is close enough to pro lacrosse hot-spot Buffalo that it had a solid fan base before it had a team.

"Syracuse has the Orangemen," Donner said. "No one was quite sure how a team would be embraced."

We know now.

Wrong deal: Dolgon believed his new franchise needed instant credibility on the field and at the box office in its inaugural 1998 season. Paul Gait, half of the most famous name in professional box lacrosse history, was an attractive candidate.

Gait and his twin brother, Gary, became lacrosse legends in Central New York when they were four-time All-Americans at Syracuse University and led the Orangemen to three consecutive national titles (1988-90).

Paul Gait had led Rochester to the Major Indoor Lacrosse League title in 1997, scoring 40 goals and assisting on 25 others in ten regular-season games and adding ten goals and six assists in two playoff victories. On paper, getting Gait was a coup, even when Dolgon had to give Rochester three first-round draft choices in return.

"It's a great deal for everybody, a fair deal," Dolgon said at the time. "We could not have a better player, ambassador, star. I expect him to play at a level higher than he's ever played before."

Gait didn't, but that's only half the story. He also arrived with the title of player personnel director, and he put together a team made up largely of fellow natives of Western Canada and coached by former MILL star and Canadian lacrosse hall-of-famer Kevin Alexander.

Local fans expecting to see a lineup littered with former SU stars instead were asked to pay up to $22.50 to see nine players who were teammates on the Victoria (British Columbia) Shamrocks the previous summer. If that wasn't enough, the team was pretty bad, too.

Gait, one of the game's greatest offensive players, assembled a team capable of scoring but incapable of stopping other teams from scoring. It finished last in the seven-team league in every defensive category - giving up a whopping 20 goals five times in 12 games - and stumbled to a 2-10 last-place record.

Donner, meanwhile, used one of Syracuse's first-round picks to get the charismatic Casey Powell, who had surpassed both Gait brothers to become the leading scorer in SU history. Another Syracuse pick helped Donner land John Grant Jr., who leads the team in scoring (32 goals, 35 assists) and is a lock to be rookie of the year.

In retrospect, then, was it a great deal for everybody, as Dolgon claimed at the time?

Wrong record: To his credit, Dolgon has been up front about the mistakes he made in the franchise's early days. He knows he goofed with the ticket pricing and the makeup of his first team, and he spent the next two years trying mightily to rectify the situation.

Unfortunately, the results on the field have made it impossible to reverse the negative momentum he generated at the start. The team is 5-29 as it prepares for Saturday's game. It is 0-18 on the road. It is 0-10 this season. Its two most established players, Gait and Mark Millon, were traded for cash and draft picks when the team started 0-4.

"We believe that although the team has not performed well in the win/loss column, the product of professional indoor lacrosse is an exciting and viable form of entertainment for Syracuse sports fans," Dolgon said.

Apparently, few others in Central New York believe that. And unless about 4,500 more than attended the Smash's last home game start believing it by Saturday night, the franchise will be gone.

Had the fans abandoned a winning team, maybe even a .500 team, Dolgon could have said with confidence that the sport simply was not a good fit for the city.

A 5-29 team, though, is never a good fit for any city.