T NFL understands that sex sells the Super Bowl

Since spring 2007, when the NFL awarded Super Bowl XLV to North Texas, Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief has been the city's loudest cheerleader for all things Super Bowl-related.

Who can blame him? Being part of the team of cities to host the biggest sporting event in the world during 2011 (there's no World Cup or Olympics this year) is a huge opportunity for Cowtown. International attention will focus on our longhorns and bricked boulevards though the game is set to be played in Arlington on Feb. 6.

Fort Worth made out like a bandit on the number of high-profile events it will host during the extravaganza: the AFC Championship team's booked at the Omni Hotel; the Taste of the NFL's using the Fort Worth Convention Center; and ESPN's planning broadcast operations from numerous outdoor studios in Sundance Square.

On top of all that testosterone-fueled frenzy, the annual Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo has busted out at Will Rogers Memorial Center. Cowboy up indeed.

Receiving the NFL's stamp of approval as an official Super Bowl event is a major coup for companies and organizations wanting to benefit from the Game Week dollars expected to flow like words from a lobbyist's mouth. Frank Supovitz, the NFL's senior vice president for events, has given talk after talk about the rewards of being on the sanctioned list -- and woe be unto businesses that try to pass off their merchandise or their merriment as official when it's not.

Go to www.northtexassuperbowl.com/event to see the activities approved for the official North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee website. Just a sampling: Remembering Tom Landry: The Personal Collection, the Souper Bowl of Caring, Cirque du Soleil presents OVO Under the Grand Chapiteau, Zest Fest 2011, XXX Bowl Encroachment and Boyz Nite Out.

Hold the phone just a second. XXX, as in triple X, as in adult entertainment? Boyz Nite Out, as in the wife's back in Sandusky and it's time to stock up on $1 bills?

Yup.

Curious, this. Mayor Mike has been silent as a grave about the NFL-sanctioned salaciousness promoted alongside our family-friendly Stock Show and Rodeo, but he's on record prominently tsking about Rick's Cabaret, a men's club operated by a publicly traded company, that's set to open near the south entrance of D/FW Airport.

"I'm not real happy about our flights coming in here and looking down on that signage and that kind of operation," Moncrief said in a protest letter to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

But advertising a sinfully good time and escapades at a swingers club via links on the Super Bowl host committee website is OK?

Moncrief, along with Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley and officials from American Airlines and D/FW Airport Board, has portrayed Rick's as a proverbial turd in the party punchbowl if it's allowed to open Thursday. They protested the club's license to sell alcohol by citing everything from possible intoxicated drivers to potential dangers of increased criminal activity, including prostitution and gambling.

One can admire those officials for their desire to keep bad influences out of North Texas. But if they really meant it, they never would have worked so darned hard to bring a Super Bowl to town.

Let's face it: Sex on the periphery is as much an accompaniment of professional football as high fives and beer bellies. Remove a few threads from the costumes of the curvy cuties who prance about the sidelines, and you've got gals ready for the spotlight at Rick's. Before- and after-game parties by the rich, the famous and the hot-hot-hot are commanding ticket prices as high as $850 apiece.

Rick's is a legal business in an appropriately zoned area. It's not close to a school, a church or residences. It will open with or without a liquor license (and if it is BYOB, the women can dance legally in the raw).

Art museums, a botanic garden and a herd of longhorns aren't everyone's idea of entertainment -- during a Super Bowl or just a regular ol' Saturday night. And where there's a clientele, there's an entrepreneur ready to make money from it.

Full disclosure: I was in a "gentlemen's club" once, back when then-Arlington Mayor Richard Greene was in a perpetual 4-foot hover over the proliferation of sexually oriented businesses along Texas 360 near Six Flags Over Texas. If the Editorial Board was going to comment, I needed to know what they were like before offering an opinion.

I came away with only one burning question: Where do they get those shoes?

Jill "J.R." Labbe is editorial director of the Star-Telegram