Swimming is a sport with problems.

1. Hardly anyone pays attention to swimming unless it’s an Olympic year. (The world championships are going on right now, in Rome. Did you have the foggiest idea?)

2. About 80 percent of all swimming news stories seem to be about what sort of suits the swimmers are wearing.

So, let’s see … nobody is watching, aside from the first week of the Olympics, once every four years … and everyone in the sport wastes tons of time and energy trying to figure out which swimsuits are legal, which are illegal and which are tweaking/revolutionizing/destroying the sport the most.

So, a modest proposal:

Swim naked.

I believe that would cure the sport. Immediately and permanently.

Let’s back up a second.

Former L.A. News Group colleague Karen Crouse, of the New York Times, is covering the swimming world championships in Rome, and she is being drawn (as all swim writers inevitably are) into the tedious discussions and arguments pertaining to suits.

Check this story on Michael Phelps by Crouse. All about the suits. Phelps apparently is wearing a suit that just got blown out of the water by a newer, better suit. Meanwhile, swimming world records — which already have the shelf life of bananas — are falling left and right. And poor Michael may be following in the wake of some also-rans for a bit until he gets the latest in suit technology.

D-U-L-L. Only swimming wonks care about this suit stuff, and it alienates everyone else, who just want an even playing field, The End.

So, let’s fix the sport.

By swimming naked.

No more suit issues, right? Because there is no suit. You just jump in and start swimming. Maybe — maybe — we will allow swim caps, so not everyone (including women) goes out and shaves their heads. But that’s it. Swim caps. Nothing else.

Meanwhile, we appeal to the globe’s prurient interest — and let’s face it, swimming already does more than a little of that — with our full-dorsal nudity.

As often is noted, the ancient Greeks were naked when they competed in the original Olympics. And if it was good enough for them …

We don’t have to impose the “naked swimmer” thing all the way down the chain of competition. In fact, we might begin it only on, say, the senior national level. Anything below that, you wear whatever voodoo-inspired suit you care to wear. Though, presumably, because so little money is involved in the lower levels, they would end up wearing the sort of basic Speedo suit that we still associate with high school-level competition.

Only on the elite level would swimmers swim naked. And I’m guessing they wouldn’t much care. (Hey, we already know about “shrinkage”, guys.) By the time they get to be world-class, swimmers already have committed themselves, body and soul, to the sport (diet, training, etc.) … and taking off the last 16th-of-an-inch of clothing … who cares? (Unless they happen to have a body not as streamlined, naturally, as someone else’s.)

Also, I guarantee … naked swimming would bring lots and lots of attention to the sport. The world championships would get a global TV deal. (As opposed to whatever non-coverage the sport is getting now.)

Of course, our naked world championships would be censored in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, and China … and even in the U.S. there would be some fuzzing out of certain body parts. But on cable, they could show it all … and HBO could break records with viewership. Or, perhaps more appropriately, Showtime could.

So, end the arguments about suits, bring eyeballs to the sport.

All together now: We want our swimmers in the all-together.