What men want...?

NFL fans may or may not know of the Lingerie Football League, created in 2009. Basically, it is what it sounds like: women in skimpy outfits playing football. I can't think of any other rationale for creating it besides "hey, guys like football and scantily-clad attractive women, let's combine them and take their money!" The league's founder, Mitch Mortaza, has even said that the target audience is "mostly beer-drinking college students aged 21 and up."

As would be expected, there's some controversy over it. Some find it degrading in that it objectifies women and appeals to perverts and lament the fact that women's football can't find traction without sex appeal. Some players don't mind, or can put up with it. Some people don't see a problem at all.

So, is there a problem? Is this simply a business venture appealing to a market audience, or is it a symptom of a sexist and perverse society? One line of thinking says that, for now, sex appeal is needed to bring in the viewers, then a more legitimately athletic focus can develop. But it could just as easily be argued that this is only the beginning; it's just going to get raunchier and more exploitative from here. Looking at popular culture, it's hard to see any direction other than the latter. Sex sells everywhere. From beer ads to condom commercials to video game characters, the less clothing and more suggestion the better. I mean, why do you think porn is such a huge business?

There's a whole issue of cultural morality at hand that can be discussed for hours, days, months, generations. But this is a football blog, so I'm going to talk about football. Regarding the combination of sex and football, it seems the Lingerie Football is just more of the same. Cheerleaders already exist. It's not like there's never been a skimpy female outfit on a football field. But do guys (the target audience of the LFL, and, really, the NFL) watch for the cheerleaders? On the whole, no. They watch for the game. The excitement of the sport. The athletic feats. The emotion of cheering for a team's success.

Sure, you're going to get the occasional guy pointing with his beer and saying "oh, yeah, look at those cheerleaders." But that's a side "benefit" to the more... vulgar-minded fan. Sports don't need sex to sell. I think people who create things like the LFL overestimate sex appeal, possibly because of their own personal preferences (read: I don't think Mitch Mortaza has the purest of motives). Creating something like the LFL is superfluous. It's very, very easy to find that kind of... visual entertainment in our society. I mean, google is free, for crying out loud. Moral issues aside, making a "sexy" football league is just unnecessary and, I think, impractical.

In the end, guys want to watch football. You don't need women in their undies to make that happen. There's plenty of those around already.