Caliente Too Nude For Lingerie Bowl; Event Canceled

The football event of the season has been canceled.

No, not the one at Raymond James Stadium. The one with scantily clad women playing tackle football at Caliente Spa and Resort.

The Lingerie Bowl has been officially canceled, Stephon McMillen, a spokesman for the Lingerie Football League, announced Sunday in an e-mail.

The cancellation is the result of a conflict over where nudity would be allowed during the event. The Lingerie Football League, which is organizing the game, has requested that people stay dressed in certain areas of the resort. That's something the clothing-optional resort would not agree to.

McMillen wrote that the league was "forced to cancel" the event because Caliente officials have "chosen to breach their agreement in relation to our previously agreed upon 'clothing mandate' during our broadcast and events at the resort."

Angye Fox, spokeswoman for Caliente, said this morning a contract was never signed with the league. "We never came to a full agreement so we haven't breached anything," she said.

The area where the bowl was supposed to be held is an empty field on the gated community's property, off Land O' Lakes Boulevard (U.S. 41). Caliente officials agreed that nudity wouldn't be allowed in this playing area, but Fox said that didn't seem to be enough for event organizers.

"Caliente is a luxury clothing-optional resort," she said. "We ran into conflicts with the Lingerie Football League wanting more areas of our resort restricted to clothing-required than we could accommodate."

One request, she said, was to require a clothing-mandate for the resort's only nightclub.

That's something they couldn't do, she said, because it would violate residents' and guests' rights in the clothing-optional community.

"I can tell them where they can't have clothes on, but I can't tell them where they must have clothes," she said.

The pools are the only areas within the resort where nudity is required.

The last talks Caliente officials had with league organizers were Friday, Fox said, and resort officials were told they would hear from the football league today. As of 10:15 a.m. today, Caliente officials hadn't directly heard from anyone from the football league, she said.

The league didn't want to place its fans, players, staff or partners in a less-than-comfortable environment, McMillen wrote.

McMillen also expressed concern that the event's "mainstream perception and reputation of the brand so many have worked diligently over these past five years to build" would be jeopardized.

"While this is a disappointing development for the thousands of fans that were planning on attending the festivities and the millions set to watch the broadcast, we feel ultimately it is in the best interest of the league not to place ourselves in what some would consider a potentially negative environment," McMillen wrote.

McMillen did not go into any more detail about the disagreement and said, on the advice of the league's attorney, he can't comment any further.

The event has been controversial from the get-go. Organizers wanted to hold a two-day bowl in Tampa on Jan. 30 and 31, with the final game on a pay-per-view channel during halftime of the Super Bowl. However, the property owner withdrew permission to use his land. The owner said complaints from neighborhood associations prompted him to walk away from the event.

Last year, organizers were forced to cancel the Lingerie Bowl after they failed to get special-use permits from Scottsdale, Ariz., in time.