‘Dancing With the Stars’ gets sports people at top of their games

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The new season of ABC’s ‘Dancing With the Stars’ (to begin airing March 22) has a sprinkling of everything, it seems.

It has athletes still in their prime: Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco and men’s figure skating gold medalist Evan Lysacek, who might be dating Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Nastia Liukin or who might just be her ‘very good friend.’

Having Liukin in the audience certainly won’t hurt ratings. And here’s what Ochocinco tweeted after his participation in the dance show was confirmed: ‘DWTS will be the first time i will be able to dance and be creative at the same time without getting fined=mustsee TV.’ Will he tweet while he dances? We suspect yes.

‘DWTS’ also has gossip tabloid stars who are, as we speak, filling up the tabloid pages -- paging Kate Gosselin. Her eight kids will fill up the audience and you know they’ll be there. I’ll bet her ex-husband will show up, too. Maybe the family will be reunited during the two-(timer)step.

Oh, and the show has an astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. Really, he went to the moon. One of his bios says he was the first astronaut to do the spacewalk and the moonwalk. Gravity might not be in his favor in pursuit of the mirror ball trophy but the dance possibilities are high fast balls.

Can’t even imagine how they’ll dress Pamela Anderson. In not much, probably.

But most of all, ‘DWTS’ will have ESPN sports reporter Erin Andrews paired up with ‘DWTS’’ hunkiest hunk, Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

Andrews has most every sports message board all a-twitter (and Twitter all agog) every time she’s on a sideline doing, by the way, an excellent job of getting interviews with players and coaches. She was most recently forced to deal with a situation where she was filmed without her knowledge through hotel door peepholes. The man was arrested and pleaded guilty, but some of the video made it to YouTube.

One suspects DVRs in many sports-minded households will be set for ‘DWTS.’ And if the wife wonders why, the husband can say with a straight face, ‘It’s for Ochocinco.’

Because, you know, you might want him on your fantasy team.

-- Diane Pucin

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