New Sport Alert: Pole Dancing

The sports world’s just about to get real. We’re mere hours away from the start of the NCAA tournament, days from the beginning of the baseball season and the NFL draft, and weeks from the start of the NBA playoffs. So it’s not surprising that a sport nearly slid under our radar without getting the attention it deserves: The Pole Dance Championships.

Luckily, Jacob Osterhout at SPORTS ILLUSTRATED was given the rough investigative journalist assignment of heading over to the Bleeker Street Theatre in New York City last Sunday to get a first-hand impression of this new phenomenon. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as lewd and/or lascivious as all of us surely hoped:

“If I was looking for a lascivious time, something akin to a Sunday afternoon brunch at the The Bada Bing! club, I was bound for serious disappointment. As many of the dancers and organizers would repeatedly point out during the afternoon, pole dancing is not stripping.

The dress code from the USPDF rulebook states, “No nudity, no G-strings or thongs. Violation of this requirement leads to immediate disqualification.”

Head over to SI to read the rest. The main thrust of the piece, so to speak, is that even though the whole affair isn’t as erotic as one would like, it’s still quite the physical challenge to the female participants; one of them had to take herself out of the championship after dislocating her elbow the day before.

But even without the extra sexiness, with a bit more publicity this could be the Hot! New! Sport! to take over the airwaves. If TV can find an excuse to air footage of large men in sunglasses sitting at a table and staring at each other (also known as: poker), there’s got a be a place for well-toned women dancing on a pole.