Cheerleading

[Rhonda Rousey's Sports Bra]

Is it a sport?

I would say yes it is but there are things about cheerleading that make me think otherwise. They are really just a sideshow at other sporting events and they don't exactly win anything unless they join a competition. A few of my best friends used to be male cheerleaders and I would give them shit all the time about it but they were also star players on the high school football team. So what are your thoughts on this? Is cheerleading a sport or not?

 

[Smooth Sexual Chocolate]

Meh.

Sure it's physical and you've got to be in pretty good shape, but like you said, its a sideshow at REAL sporting events. Nobody pays to see the cheerleaders, no one is paying to get front row seats at local cheer competitions. It's only on T.V. when ESPN literally has nothing else to air.

Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, and I guess soccer and any forms of the following are what I consider sports. Cheerleading is more of an athletic activity than a sport.

 

[jmt225]

When it's competition, yeah... it's a sport.

Honestly, outside of gymnast and softball pitchers, there are no more athletic girls in this country than cheerleaders, specifically those in competition. Those girls work their fucking asses off year round to be in the best shape possible and learn those very, very hard routines they have to perform. They work just as hard as any other athlete, which is why you have to call them just that: Athletes.

As far as this side show stuff... I don't buy that at all. To say something like that would be the same as saying professional wrestlers aren't truly athletes. Are you really going to sit there and tell me someone like Chris Jericho isn't a real athlete because a big part of his job is entertaining an audience instead of wrestling "forreal"?

The fact is, while yes... the competitions are based around entertainment and scantily clad young women, those young women still work harder and are much more athletic than a lot of men in sports.

Besides, in this country, when you can sit there and look at golf as a sport, or a lot of those ******ed Olympic games as "sports," then you should definitely look at competitive cheerleading as a sport. There's no logical excuse not to.

 

[Slyfox696]

When it's competition, yeah... it's a sport.

Honestly, outside of gymnast and softball pitchers, there are no more athletic girls in this country than cheerleaders, specifically those in competition. Those girls work their fucking asses off year round to be in the best shape possible and learn those very, very hard routines they have to perform. They work just as hard as any other athlete, which is why you have to call them just that: Athletes.

As far as this side show stuff... I don't buy that at all. To say something like that would be the same as saying professional wrestlers aren't truly athletes. Are you really going to sit there and tell me someone like Chris Jericho isn't a real athlete because a big part of his job is entertaining an audience instead of wrestling "forreal"?

The fact is, while yes... the competitions are based around entertainment and scantily clad young women, those young women still work harder and are much more athletic than a lot of men in sports.

Besides, in this country, when you can sit there and look at golf as a sport, or a lot of those ******ed Olympic games as "sports," then you should definitely look at competitive cheerleading as a sport. There's no logical excuse not to.

The problem is, what you're talking about is not cheerleading, it's dance competition. Cheerleading is just that...leading cheers. It's what millions of young women have done for decades. THAT is not a sport, and to say otherwise is silly. It's cheer leading...if they do cartwheels and stuff to help pump up the crowd, then great, but it's not a sport.

Now, if you want to get into the dance competition stuff....that's a different discussion, and most of what you said is correct.

 

[Ferbian]

Without offending anybody that may be a cheerleader and reading this, I would say, no, because while certainly you could credit them as great athletes that work for the very thing they're doing, they put a lot of time into it, but in the end, it remains to serve mostly as eye candy and entertainment for the majority of sports which is very male dominated.

I mean certainly you can win a nice little medal etc. through being a cheerleader, but in the end, you can win a great looking belt through professional wrestling, and nobody credits that as a direct sport, even if they work hard to stay in shape and remain putting on a show, but it's sports entertainment, which I'm guessing you could very well fit cheerleading under, while including the fact that it may very well lean more to entertainment.