By Brad Locke
August 20, 2004

(AgapePress) - As the media have obsessively reminded us, the original Olympians competed in the nude. Judging by recent trends, I'd say modern-day athletes are trying to turn back the clock a few hundred years.

I sometimes naïvely think that sports is a respite from the sex culture that bombards me daily. I know better, of course. After watching a few days of the Olympics -- where amateurism and a certain amount of innocence once reigned -- I'm reminded that sport is using sex to sell itself. American swimmer Amanda Beard, once known as the precocious teddy-bear toting teen of the 1996 Games, is now a certified sex symbol -- by choice. She's modeled for such soft-porn magazines as Maxim and FHM, and during a profile by NBC the other night, she pranced about and posed in a skimpy bikini. (This was a portion of the programming I was taping for my 7-year-old daughter, by the way. Have to be handy with the remote when she watches it. Thanks, Amanda!)

Attractive female athletes are in demand. Sleaze mags know this, which is why Playboy had a spread featuring some of this year's Olympians (I should note that U.S. softball player Jennie Finch, who yields a lot more hits on Google than she does on the field, turned down Playboy's entreaty). WNBA player Lauren Jackson posed nude for an "artistic" (riiiight) Australian magazine earlier this summer. Two of Bulgaria's gold medal-winning gymnasts have appeared in a Japanese porn flick.

Two words: Anna Kournikova. She proved that success isn't necessary to become a star athlete. She has never won a professional tournament title, yet she's quite possibly the most famous female tennis player of all time. Maria Sharapova, the 2004 Wimbledon champion, has the Kournikova sex appeal plus the ability to win, which makes her even more attractive to the media and their brainwashed public.

The media is what ultimately drives this, or at least keeps up the momentum. ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com find any excuse to feature scantily clad women, athletes or otherwise. CBSSportsline has a "Sexiest Athlete Rating" for Olympians. Sports Illustrated, in its "Sports Beat" section, usually runs a picture of some cleavage-baring bombshell, no matter how remote her connection to the accompanying pseudo-sports story. A few years ago, Serena and Venus Williams posed for Sports Illustrated wearing nothing but the same American flag. How proud George Washington would be.

OK, but all that stuff is away from the arena, where we know sex won't invade the actual competition. Well, except for women's volleyball, where the players' bikinis are at least three sizes too small. I find it ironic that these women have taken offense at the cheerleaders who perform during breaks in Athens. They're wearing more than the volleyball players!

Oh, and women's tennis, where you'll have no problem finding pictures of certain players (Sharapova, Williams, et al.) reaching up their skirt to retrieve a tennis ball, revealing smooth, toned upper thighs. And speaking of Williams, her catsuits make Las Vegas prostitutes look like Mennonites. And as one reader recently pointed out, there is no shortage of pictures or video taken from the floor looking up at gymnasts and other athletes as they splay their legs in athletic maneuvering.

It's not just the media and athletes who have been driving this trend. Stepp Blatter, president of FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), has urged women soccer players to flash some more flesh by wearing skimpier uniforms. LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw said his tour's players should wear make-up and do other things to make themselves more attractive.

I'm sure this is happening in some form with men as well, but frankly, I can't find many egregious examples besides Michael Phelps' plumber look.

Sex and sports have been tied together for a long time -- at least since Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe -- though it's not usually been overt. Sex has been subtly stitched into the sporting fabric over time, and we've become rather desensitized to sex in general. I hope it's not too late to rescue sports from the puerile dysfunction that's come to define TV and cinema, where true art has been traded for dull-witted notions of sexual "freedom."

Our young athletes are being taught by their heroes that to really make it to the top -- especially if you're a female -- you have to flaunt your body.

Can't a sport be allowed to stand on its own merit? Some think not, so the uncreative but effective solution is sex. It sells. It sells a game, but unfortunately, it also involves the selling of bodies and souls.