Gussie Moran scandalized the world of tennis back in 1949 when she showed up for her second match at Wimbledon wearing decorative lace panties under her skirt.

* Gussie Moran scandalized the world of tennis back in 1949 when she showed up for her second match at Wimbledon wearing decorative lace panties under her skirt. Women's soccer in 2004 is just as puritanical, it seems, though of course for utterly different reasons. When the president of FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, suggested that the women's game might be more popular if the players wore tighter shorts, he was furiously rebuked by just about everybody. Julie Foudy, president of the Women's Sports Foundation, growled: "We'll start wearing tighter shorts when he starts doing press conferences in his bathing suit." Taking the matter even further, from bathing suits to birthday suits, Norwegian soccer gal Lise Klaveness said: "If the crowd only wants to come and watch models, then they should go and buy a copy of Playboy." Now, the main problem with women's soccer, as was demonstrated by the collapse of the Women's United Soccer Association last fall, is that not enough people do want to come and watch it, for any reason. The man from FIFA was just trying to help; but of course, no good deed goes unpunished, especially when carried out with insufficient "sensitivity."