For the past month, the baseball steroid scandal has dominated sports pages across the nation,… For the past month, the baseball steroid scandal has dominated sports pages across the nation, and it’s starting to bother me.

No, I’m not upset that the media blitz has caused personal turmoil for players like the San Francisco Giants’ Barry Bonds. It’s fun to watch a man who makes $18 million a year whine about how unfair and difficult his life is.

I’m miffed because this overkill has diverted attention from scandals that are ripping apart other sports. Recently, controversies have shaken the worlds of sumo wrestling, cow fighting (yes, cow fighting) and high school cheerleading. Let’s forget professional baseball and its increasingly Incredible Hulk-like players for a moment and examine the conflicts plaguing these lesser-publicized sports.

Like baseball, the Japanese art of sumo wrestling is facing a dire controversy, but it does not concern steroids — it concerns pants.

Reuters reports that Japan’s amateur sumo organization is allowing young wrestlers to wear “sumo pants,” resembling gym shorts, instead of the traditional mawashi, an arranged cloth that acts as a ceremonial belt and fat-guy thong.

A representative from the amateur association argued that, “Pubescent kids are not going to want to take part if they don’t look cool.”

So an overweight 15-year-old wearing nothing but short shorts and a hairpin would look cool?

But Japan’s official national sumo association said that it will, under no condition, allow young competitors to cover their entire asses.

“The national stadium has its rules and ways of doing things,” a spokesperson said. “We have no intention of allowing children in pants into the ring.”

That is my new favorite quote of all time.

Moving onto another sport in which strange-looking fat things fight each other, controversy has erupted in the world of cow fighting. As an animal rights advocate and person generally opposed to incredibly stupid forms of entertainment, I had hoped the controversy was because there even is a world of cow fighting. But no, the controversy is because of doping.

Each year, the town of Sion, Switzerland, holds “The Combat of the Queens,” in which pedigreed cows engage in cock-fight-like battles. The event has all the blatant animal abuse of Spain’s running of the bulls without the exotic allure.

The Associated Press reports that, this year, the competition’s top official wants the cows tested for performance-enhancing drugs.

“There are controls for racehorses and dogs, and there’s no reason to do it differently for cows,” chief veterinarian Joseph Jaeger said.

I hope Jaeger succeeds in eliminating doping from the competition, because it would be a real shame if the world lost its respect for cow fighting.

Our final controversy involves a Texas lawmaker who is taking action against high school cheerleaders who practice sexy, MTV-inspired bumping and grinding.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports that state Rep. Al Edwards, D-Houston, has proposed a bill targeting “sexually suggestive performances” at high school halftime shows.

“It’s just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they’re shaking their behinds,” said Edwards, a 61-year-old veteran of the Texas House of Representatives to whom I am forwarding every e-mail I receive regarding Viagra.

Edwards’ bill would decrease funding to schools where cheerleaders do risque routines.

“The legislation said we don’t want to see that anymore or we might cut your funding later,” Edwards said.

In other words, keep it up, young lady, and you’ll be both lewd and stupid.

So, there’s a recap of recent scandals in the wider world of sports. You may think the abovementioned sports and their tribulations are trivial compared to rampant steroid abuse in America’s favorite past time, but I disagree.

If we ignore these issues, we face a future in which big, flopping butt cheeks are no longer a part of the appeal of sumo wresting; steroid crazed cows terrorize the Swiss Alps; and there is no appeal to high school cheerleading, at least not to Kevin Spacey’s character in “American Beauty” or me.

I don’t want to live in that future. The time to act is now.

E-mail Nick Keppler at [email protected].