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Tampa's Image On The Line

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: January 14, 2009

Here it is, coming up in less than two weeks - the football game of the year, the world coming to town - and Tampa still hasn't got its act together.

I'm talking, of course, about the Lingerie Bowl, which may or may not be the biggest thing to come to West Tampa since yellow rice.

By now, you know that the Super Bowl is much more than just a football game. The truth is people don't even talk about the game. I mean, how excited are you going to be if it is the Arizona Cardinals and Baltimore Ravens?

The discussion almost every morning-after isn't about the game, it's who had the best commercials.

The second-most talked about thing is the halftime show, especially if there were any wardrobe malfunctions. Only after that will the talk drift to that final game-winning field goal that came after most of America lost interest.

Only In America

In recent years, one of the periphery events to the game has been the Lingerie Bowl. It is a full-contact football game played between two teams of women in their underwear.

That's not exactly true. I think they wear helmets and shoes, but I'm not sure.

Like me, you may not have seen the game only because it has been a pay-per-view alternative to the Super Bowl halftime show and some of you may have had a difficult time pulling that one off.

The game, as you might imagine, has been so successful they are organizing a league that is supposed to play later in the year when it warms up. Tampa even has its own franchise - the Tampa Breeze.

Anyhow, the new league has scheduled three days of events, parties and football games on a couple of vacant lots in West Tampa. The idea is they would tape the event on the Saturday night before the game and then show it the next day.

It seems like a natural for Tampa, which has a reputation for women with no clothes on.

But at last Thursday's city council session, a request to close a few streets in West Tampa for the Lingerie Bowl's national championships was thwarted when it was pulled from the agenda. The council decided not to vote on the request after learning that the proper insurance documents hadn't been filed.

One West Tampa merchant suggested the bowl game might draw thousands to West Tampa neighborhoods and there might be inadequate police protection.

Lace 'Em Up

Lingerie Bowl promoters have promised to go ahead with the game.

Truthfully, I don't understand why the city has not come to bat on this one. The city already has said it plans to close a section of Dale Mabry Highway as well as shut down anything remotely close to Raymond James Stadium for the other game. You'd think they would want to do the same for the Lingerie Bowl, where the players already are playing with only their bare essentials.

I don't want to play politics here, but I'll bet it never would have come to this if you had voted for strip club owner Joe Redner the last time he ran for city council.

You do remember how long it took us to land an NFL franchise, don't you? If the council doesn't figure something out, there are others who would love to have a Lingerie League team. Why, out in Pasco County, where there are about 16 clothing-optional resorts, I think there are more people in that county who don't wear clothes than do.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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