I always wondered why there were so few male cheerleaders in the pros, when they’re in every other level. In high school, many of the football players were also cheerleaders. They did crazy acrobatic stuff, helped support the big pyramids, catch the girls, throw them around, etc… As I understood it, that stuff continued into college with competitions, etc… It was a whole sport. Then professional cheerleading mostly seems to just be girls shaking their boobies very modestly for 15 seconds before the Bud Light commercial.
Because the pros are and always have been a watered down money grab of a sport compared to the pagentry and history of gridiron football’s true roots at the college and amatuer level.
Cheerleading of the type you’re talking about where they do big tricks is unsurprisingly quite dangerous. Often more dangerous than the sport that they’re cheering for.
I suspect that there is an aspect of financial liability involved in the decision.
The women on the NFL cheerleader squads usually do a few choreographed dance routines that don’t often get shown on TV (it’s usually during a commercial break) but I haven’t seen them do much of the more acrobatic feats you typically see at the college games. If this were something new I’d assume it was for liability reasons because it’s not worth budgeting as much for potential injuries the way they do for the football players, but it seems like it’s always been that way at the NFL and I doubt that was much of a concern in the ’50s or ’60s. Most teams also don’t have marching bands or even spirit bands either, so maybe it really is mostly cost-cutting.
I think the Packers usually have male cheerleaders, but that is likely because they don’t have any professional cheerleaders and instead invite cheer squads from local colleges to cheer at home games.
I always wondered why there were so few male cheerleaders in the pros, when they’re in every other level. In high school, many of the football players were also cheerleaders. They did crazy acrobatic stuff, helped support the big pyramids, catch the girls, throw them around, etc… As I understood it, that stuff continued into college with competitions, etc… It was a whole sport. Then professional cheerleading mostly seems to just be girls shaking their boobies very modestly for 15 seconds before the Bud Light commercial.
Because the pros are and always have been a watered down money grab of a sport compared to the pagentry and history of gridiron football’s true roots at the college and amatuer level.
Cheerleading of the type you’re talking about where they do big tricks is unsurprisingly quite dangerous. Often more dangerous than the sport that they’re cheering for.
I suspect that there is an aspect of financial liability involved in the decision.
The women on the NFL cheerleader squads usually do a few choreographed dance routines that don’t often get shown on TV (it’s usually during a commercial break) but I haven’t seen them do much of the more acrobatic feats you typically see at the college games. If this were something new I’d assume it was for liability reasons because it’s not worth budgeting as much for potential injuries the way they do for the football players, but it seems like it’s always been that way at the NFL and I doubt that was much of a concern in the ’50s or ’60s. Most teams also don’t have marching bands or even spirit bands either, so maybe it really is mostly cost-cutting.
I think the Packers usually have male cheerleaders, but that is likely because they don’t have any professional cheerleaders and instead invite cheer squads from local colleges to cheer at home games.