Sitting around in a swimsuit is an odd way to earn a college scholarship.

I’m sure it seemed especially odd to the local bank’s scholarship committee that day I burst in wearing nothing but a Speedo, as I tried to enhance my application.

Of course, I didn’t really do this; it would be crazy. After all, what does a person’s appearance in a swimsuit have to do with his or her ability to use a college scholarship?

The Miss America people may be learning the answer to this question: Nothing. During this year’s live pageant telecast on Sept. 16, Miss America organizers are inviting viewers to call a 900 number to vote on whether to end the swimsuit competition.

Just think. If the competition is ended, Miss America judges won’t have to face tortured deliberations like these:

“Hmmm, Miss Virginia seemed sluggish in the interview, but now that I see her legs are so shapely, I see that she would be an outstanding college student. Also Miss Nevada, who seemed most qualified for a scholarship based on her Nobel Prize in chemistry, has hips that seem far too wide to succeed in college classrooms.”

The swimsuit competition makes the pageant seem like a sham. Despite all appearances, organizers insist their contests are “scholarship” pageants and not “beauty” pageants. As a reporter who covered local pageants, I frequently slipped and called them “beauty” pageants. This caused pageant organizers to smite my head repeatedly with the jewel-encrusted scepter given to the winner of the beauty pageant. Ouch! I mean, scholarship pageant.

“I’m warning you,” organizers politely shrieked when I misspoke. “If you call it ‘beauty’ pageant again, I would have this 50 angry young women come after you with red-hot curling irons if I didn’t think it would mess up their make-up!”

When I told them swimsuits didn’t seem to have anything to do with scholarships, pageant organizers said they demonstrated a contestant’s “poise and healthy wholesomeness.”

I’m not sure what that means, but I think it’s the sort of thing men in dark, sleazy joints reward by stuffing dollar bills into G-strings. “Nice poise!” they shout. “Whatta set of wholesomeness, baby! Whoo! C’mon, shake that healthiness!”

When arguments in favor of swimsuit competitions wore as thin as the swimsuits themselves, pageant organizers would point out that there were other important pageant competitions that had nothing to do with beauty.

“Each girl is interviewed by judges to determine her intelligence and goals,” they would say.

“Oh, ” I would reply. “So you’re saying that intelligence in a woman is not beautiful?”

Needless to say, I made few friends among the pageant organizers.

I can almost understand other elements of pageant competitions. For example, the talent competition makes sense because some contestants will major in arts in college. (Though perhaps contestants majoring in math and science should be allowed to work out difficult equations on a blackboard or dissect frogs onstage.)

But swimsuits? What use are they, exactly? Perhaps if they had a backstroke competition it would make sense to wear a swimsuit, even though this also doesn’t seem a necessary skill to earn a college scholarship – unless they’re going out for the swim team.

Giving someone a college scholarship for the way she looks in a swimsuit makes as much sense as awarding the Olympic breast-stroke gold medal to the swimmer who scores highest on a math test.

Math tests in swimming, like swimsuits in “scholarship” pageants, are irrelevant to the supposedly true purpose of the contest.

But then, we are a society reveling in irrelevancies. We choose political candidates who cater to voters with the best attack ads, fund-raising skills and clever soundbites, even though these have little to do with how a person would do in office.

Politicians probably don’t like to do this any more than voters enjoy being subjected to it. But it’s become an accepted – though disliked and bogus – prerequisite for the job. Just like swimsuits.

The only way I can see to defend the Miss America swimsuit competition is that it teaches young women that putting up with crap that doesn’t make sense is the American way. And maybe it’s fitting that the pageant winner, who demonstrates high tolerance for such absurd senselessness, gets a free pass to college, since she will likely have to put up with lots of it when she gets there.

(Incidentally, not that it matters, but the author wrote this column wearing nothing but bathing trunks and flippers. And he looks fabulous! Nice poise!)

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Shawn Plank is a freelance writer from Richmond, Indiana.