The Art of Male Cheerleading

by fatcatxl
JetNation Guest Columnist

Oakland has the Raiderettes, the Cowboys have the most famous cheerleaders in the world, and the New York Jets have… the flag boys.

As a younger Jet fan, I’ve already learned to appreciate watching my team make stupid decisions at every turn the past few years (i.e. drafting Bryan Thomas, signing Curtis Conway, drafting Bryan Thomas, playing Mo Lewis and drafting Bryan Thomas just to name a few). However there is a debacle, dare I say it… a travesty, that can’t be left unattended. I believe that our posters above the age of 15 will remember (sorry EB), that the U.S. won the Cold War because the USSR couldn’t close the dreaded cheerleading gap. Why have the Patriots won three out of the last four Super Bowls? Because they have cheerleaders. So unless we want to make like the Soviets and disband into several smaller independent states, we need to close that gap. I for one do not want this team to become the Uzbekistan of the NFL.

Yet as TMQ says, you can’t dance with the champ, you’ve got to knock him down. So Woody has to take this up a notch. Woody needs to step up to the challenge. What Woody needs to do is join the Baltimore Ravens and become one of two NFL teams to have male cheerleaders.

The list of what male cheerleaders could bring to this team could go on and on. Anywhere from the sheer sexiness that we bring, to the never ending pep, male cheerleaders are obviously game changers. If you don’t believe me, let me quickly show you some of the secrets of the dark, mysterious underworld of male cheerleading.

My male cheerleading career, (so far the whole one year), started innocently enough; as a joke. I went to tryouts as an unathletic 5’10, 200 pound blob. By the end of cheerleading I was an unathletic 5‘10, 200 pound blob. But I was forever changed.

A few days before tryouts, there was a meeting for potential male cheerleaders to check out the sport. I think I was one of two people there. I wasn’t serious about the prospect of cheering, until the coach said the words that changed my life. “Kurt come here and try a chair‿.

“A what?‿.

“A chair, just come here and put your hand on her a$$‿. Right there I began to think that maybe cheerleading had some redeeming qualities. Of course it took my almost half the season to be able to do the chair correctly, but who minds practicing that?

As a blob, I’m naturally uncoordinated, so the dance part of our routine was a scary thing. Even though I messed that up several times throughout the season, it was still a thrill. Yes, a thrill (I’m not thrilled with the word choice either, but my thesaurus isn’t helping me out).

Our dance seemed to feature the guys, so it put us in a spotlight–a spotlight which I obviously belonged in. Quick question: Have any of you ever been in front of 4,000 girls, start dancing, and they all cheer for you?

Wait. I have.

At the national competition in Florida that my team went too, the roar when the guys started dancing was amazing. I was used to cheerleaders screaming at me, but only when I tried to spy on them in the locker room. But back to the problem at hand.

I have thought of several good reasons Woody needs to hire male cheerleaders. For one, they have charisma. I don’t know what that brings to a football team, but I’d feel better knowing our team is very charismatic. We would also give our female Jet fans something to look at during timeouts. But besides all that, we male cheerleaders would also do another very important job. Distract Tom Brady. Ok, Ok that was a cheap joke. My bad.

As I mentioned before, I’m a blob. I might possibly be the worst male cheerleader in the history of the sport, ability-wise. I have the pep but not the skill to bring this team to the next level. Some people might say, “Hey, Kurt it doesn’t seem that hard‿ or “Hey Kurt this article sucks, when are you gonna end it?‿ In answer to the former, I suggest you take a look at http://whatisprox.com. I’m going to say this now to get it out in the open. I will never ever be good enough to even attempt stuff like that at the pro level. The stuff those guys can do is absolutely insane. John Abraham may be able to sack the quarterback, except of course when he’s on the sideline, but can he tumble and do a one-armed rewind?

Honestly, I don’t even know what a one-armed rewind is, and I couldn’t even imagine what I’d have to do to attempt it. Yet the guys on that site can do it. Obviously we need to sign some of these guys, and I bet they would provide some solid special teams contributions and depth. If Jet fans can be convinced that Darrell McClover is the future at linebacker, and that Rashad Washington deserves a chance to start at safety opposite Coleman, I don’t think it would be hard to convince them to try to sign these guys. Just look at all they can bring to the team and they wouldn’t even count against the 53 man roster, thereby not taking away spots from the all-stars such as Derek Pagel and Alan Harper.

fatcatxl will be performing at a cheerleading competition near you. Be on the lookout.

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