It gives me absolutely no adolescent, smirking, giggling, unreconstructed joy whatsoever to bring news this week of a new venture in sport in the United States entitled the Lingerie Football League. It is simply part of the job description that comes with writing a column entitled World In Motion that I am obliged to deliver news of developments in world sport, and so this week we are talking women playing full contact American football wearing the traditional helmet and pads and little else. No joke. Straight up. To be precise, the outfit is a bikini top and a tight pair of shorts the kind of which I guess we best associate with Daisy Duke.

There is, you will understand, a natural inclination here to snigger but I am indebted to the journalist covering his local franchise, the Denver Dream, who put me straight with his observation when sent to write about a try-out session for locals hoping to become Dream girls: “I realised after about 14 minutes that being cynical about lingerie football is like doing coke in the 80s. It's quite unoriginal.”

I would also like to thank the aforementioned Denver hack for noting that “Never during a timed sprint would a tube of lip gloss fall out of my shorts.”

Some facts. This will be a league played over 20 weeks with ten teams from across the country each so-named to suggest that punters who buy a ticket will not only get a game of football for their money but will probably get laid too. It has sold TV distribution rights too, so if, for instance, you become a fan of San Diego Seduction or Dallas Desire, you can get updates, footage etc. from channels served by Fox Mobile Distribution.

How has all this happened and why? I guess we should trot out the tiresome old Don King cliché, “Only in America”, and follow that by explaining that back in 2004, when the Superbowl organisers were planning their half-time entertainment, someone in the room, presumably someone not concerned about instant humiliation, piped up with: “What about women playing American football in underwear?” And somehow the idea was carried. And it was a rip-roaring success. There are three monstrous leaps of understanding here for British readers to straddle, but hopefully you are still with me. It is kind of like Loaded magazine taking itself seriously. Or the staff of Hooters being asked to complete an 80-yard touchdown rather than an order of beer and chicken wings.

Indeed, the promotional blurb from the league describes itself as “true fantasy football”. And if the nature of the product wasn’t clear enough already, punters from Seattle have been helped further with an explanation from the league’s creative director, Heather Theisen, that their franchise, Seattle Mist, “will be, essentially, ‘Nightlife meets Sports meets Baywatch’.”

But not all America has so willingly loosened its necktie for the concept. The Atlanta Steam were deemed too steamy and could not find a stadium in the city prepared to host them. This is apparently a 21st-century identity crisis from which Atlanta may never recover and also an unmissable opportunity for Charlotte, where the Steam will be welcomed with open arms. It has also allowed another Lingerie League spokeswoman to derive the conclusion that this makes Charlotte “a progressive city”. She explains further that “just because Charlotte is in the Deep South, it doesn't mean it doesn't have great things going on.”

But before you start booking your travel packages for the big September launch, it would be misleading not to share the following sober instructions from a senior coach to his assistants during a talent-spotting session for one of the teams. “Coaches,” he said, “don't take into account their looks. Evaluate them only on their ability.”

If you are still with me at this stage, you will presumably be either laughing at the absurdity of the entire project or you will be feeling a burning sense of rage. We are constantly informed that the United States leads the way in sports marketing, and though this is one lead that the United Kingdom may not be following, it does ask questions.

It is not so long ago that the women’s pro-soccer league in the United States bellyflopped on the back of financial problems. That was a league that made real advancements in the quality of the women’s game; are we then to conclude that serious women’s sport doesn’t work as a business but that the Loaded version does?