Columnists, Sports

Fish and Chipps: The case against cheerleading

While fans focus on the players, cheerleaders often subject themselves to unfair standards and conditions. PHOTO COURTESY WIKIMEDIA
While fans focus on the players, cheerleaders often subject themselves to unfair standards and conditions. PHOTO COURTESY WIKIMEDIA

Every time I’m driving to a sporting event, I can’t help but think to myself, “Gosh, I wonder if the blonde cheerleader in the back corner of the stadium behind the end zone who I can’t see from my top row seat is going to land her running tuck tonight.”

Nah, I’m just messing. I’ll admit, I’ve often wondered if the sixth inning hot dog race is rigged (I’m convinced it is), or if the concession stand will have a “buy one get one free” popcorn deal, or if there’s even a slight possibility I could slip into the stadium clubhouse section to grab a small slice of the filet mignon that caught my eye as I was walking to the bathroom.

But the cheerleaders? With all due respect, in the 22 years during which I’ve existed on this earth, the thought of a cheerleader hitting her standing tuck or back handspring at a sporting event hasn’t once crossed my mind.

Has it crossed yours? Seriously, if anyone has actually given more than five seconds of thought to the cheerleaders on the sidelines of sporting events, then I will personally buy them a Chipotle burrito (assuming of course, you have no personal allegiance to cheerleading and are simply attending a sporting event with cheerleaders on the sidelines).

Why? Because cheerleading is as pointless to sports as the fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean” is to the film industry. I’d rather watch a random dude fail miserably at a Buffalo Wild Wings challenge or go to a senior citizens’ bingo night than see a bunch of attractive females wave their pompoms and yell cheers that no one follows or cares about.

If there’s anyone who can argue that cheerleading brings any value to sporting events than he or she is either:

  1. Forever stuck in 1985
  2. One of those people who desperately wanted to go to the Louvre to get an Instagram picture but never understood why there was a huge crowd of people surrounding the Mona Lisa (like, it’s a painting of an ugly woman who needs a facelift. Like, what’s the big deal?).

Let’s begin with the basics (one, two, three!).

Cheerleading has always been, and still is, the most sexist sport in this country. It just happens to be that there are 25 beautiful women who were chosen to be the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders? Yeah, right. Cheerleading promotes the classic stereotype that young ladies and women have to look and act a certain way.

Don’t take my word for it — just go to YouTube to find former NFL cheerleaders talk about how they use to have to take a “jiggle test” each week before games.

If that doesn’t disgust you, then hopefully this will. For all the work and ridiculous standards NFL cheerleaders must keep up with, most of them don’t even make minimum wage for all of their efforts — which includes photo shoots, public appearances, team practices, workouts and games.

Five NFL cheerleading squads have filed lawsuits against the professional teams they cheer for. Just last week, the New York Jets settled a class-action lawsuit with its former and current cheerleaders for $324,000. The lawsuit claimed that team cheerleaders earned $150 per home game, but weren’t compensated for practices, appearances and expenses.

In September 2014, the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders were awarded $1.25 million after they claimed the team broke several labor laws such as failing to pay minimum wage and withholding wages for months.

This past July, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that deemed cheerleaders employees of professional sports teams and now requires teams to pay cheerleaders minimum wage and compensate them for all of their practices and events.

Well, it’s good to know that someone actually cares about the cheerleaders, because clearly their own teams don’t give a damn. So much for a sport that just hired its first ever full-time female coach, right?

Now let’s take it up a notch (four, five, six!).

Cheerleading isn’t just pointless — it’s also extremely dangerous. You’ve probably never thought about this because you’re usually watching the game at hand, but from time to time cheerleaders actually perform pretty amazing stunts and tumbles that require an extreme amount of practice and skill.

But the rate of serious injuries in cheerleading is astonishingly high.

According to CBS News, “cheerleading has accounted for approximately 66 percent of all catastrophic injuries in high school girl athletes over the past 25 years.”

A December study published in the journal Pediatrics discovered that 31 percent of cheerleading injuries are concussions, and more than 50 percent of injuries occur during stunts.

Unlike football, its on-field counterpart, cheerleading statistics are surprisingly hard to find because some states don’t even consider cheerleading an official sport. According to The Journal News, only 35 states recognize cheerleading as a sanctioned interscholastic sport and New York was the most recent state to reclassify cheerleading back in 2014.

So if you think that cheerleading is just a bunch of random dance moves combined with some signs and a nice big smile, think again.

And now for the kicker (seven, eight, nine!).

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “What does this guy even know about cheerleading and why he is railing on a sport he’s never been a part of?”

Ding! Ding! Wrong.

As an alumnus and former member of the New Albany High School cheerleading squad — once upon a time I proudly donned the Eagle uniform as the school mascot — I saw firsthand how sexist this sport really is.

Every Friday, the cheerleaders (my teammates) would have to put together a candy bag and deliver it to a senior football player during the school day.

First, why would a serious athlete eat candy on game day? Second, half of the seniors on the football team didn’t even play and were only succumbed to action when the score was 50-0 in garbage time.

Why did the cheerleaders have to reward these players for success they didn’t even really earn? Are we really trying to emulate “Friday Night Lights”? Shouldn’t it be the football players delivering candy bags to the cheerleaders? I mean, they’re the ones who are actually putting their bodies on the line every Friday night with those backflips, handsprings and tucks.

Amid all the evidence to the contrary, I don’t actually hate cheerleading. In fact, I’m all for competitive cheerleading. But let’s be real here, cheerleading at sporting events is so utterly pointless that you’ve probably spent more time thinking about it as you’ve read this column than you ever have at a sporting event.

And the worst part of all, the people who sanction cheerleading don’t even care about the women who wave the pompoms for them.

Go team!

In a world where Ronda Rousey is kicking (almost) everyone’s ass, Serena Williams is dominating the tennis courts and the U.S. Women’s soccer team is finally getting the respect it’s always deserved, we’re still perfectly content with cheerleaders and the sexist roles we force them to play in sports.

Let’s wake up from this stupidity and actually treat cheerleaders with the respect all athletes deserve.

What’s that spell? Progress!

(P.S. Shoutout to the 1999 Rick Reilly column that jolted me back to reality on this issue.)

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Isaac is a sports columnist for The Daily Free Press and a High School Sports Correspondent for The Boston Globe. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Isaac spent the 2015 summer interning at USA TODAY Sports and For The Win. Aside from his love of sports, Isaac has a severe Chipotle addiction and an unhealthy love affair with Ohio State football. Follow him on Twitter @IsaacChipps

2 Comments

  1. Great article Isaac. I never appreciated cheerleading by any definition of sport. So glad to know that there men who feel the same.

  2. It’s a shame this article was written in such a way to not distinguish competing cheerleading vs. professional cheerleading.

    True athletic competitive cheerleaders also believe professional cheerleading is sexist and pointless.

    For the record, only 2 NFL teams have cheerleaders that stunt/tumble, the rest are pom dancers/models. All professional cheerleaders are run by marketing departments which focus on appearance instead of the sport of cheerleading.

    Your article is trying to put these two types of cheerleading together when they are completely different. Please research more next time you write on this topic, athletic cheerleaders don’t deserve the professional cheerleader stereotype.