Dumb 'n' dumber

In the interest of full disclosure, I think cheerleading is absolutely stupid. Also in the interest of full disclosure, I dated a girl in college who'd been a high school cheerleader. She still thought it was super rad. I didn't, and I couldn't pretend. I even had her read Rick Reilly's fantastic October 1999 column that wonderfully elucidated the frivolity of cheerleading. She and I only dated about two more months. I guess we just couldn't see eye to G-double-O-D E-Y-E.

I mention all of this because I noticed a story in Sunday's New York Times about how schools in upstate New York now are being forced to provide cheerleaders for girls' sports. The mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice claiming that "the lack of official sideline support" made the school's female basketball players "seem like second-string" and somehow violated Title IX laws. The mother who filed the complaint, Rose Pudish, did so even though her daughter, Keri, didn't really want cheerleaders at her basketball games. Pudish, an accountant who works for the federal government, told the Times, "It sends the wrong message that girls are second-class athletes and don't deserve the school spirit, that they're just little girls playing silly games and the real athletes are the boys."

You know what really sends the message that girls are second-class athletes? CHEERLEADING.

It began in the late 19th century at Princeton football games and was first performed by dudes. Later, Princeton alum Thomas Peebles introduced the idea at the University of Minnesota, where it seemed to catch on. More and more women took up cheerleading after the turn of the century primarily because they weren't allowed to play actual sports. And now, here we are in 2007, and virtually all cheerleaders are female.

The entire act of cheerleading is based on supporting someone else who's actually doing something. To quote Reilly, "Exactly what does a girl get out of cheerleading, anyway, besides a circle skirt and a tight sweater? Why do we encourage girls to cheer the boys, to idolize the boys?"

And why should we encourage them to idolize the girls? Look: The tumbling, the aerial acrobatics, the dancing, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying it's pointless. Cheerleaders don't affect the outcomes of games. Not at the high school level and certainly not at the professional level. Anyone who honestly believes NFL and NBA teams have dance squads to "fire up the crowd" are merely using the phrase "fire up the crowd" with a wholly different connotation.

Two years ago in Johnson City, a handful of cheerleaders showed up at a girls' game after a boys' game was cancelled at the last minute. Their cheering drowned out the coach, annoyed the players, and, according to the Times report, "created so much tension that the cheerleaders left before halftime." One cheerleader, 18-year-old Joquina Spence, a senior, said the female players asked her squad, "'Why are you here?'"

In November, The New York State Public High School Athletic Association sent a letter to its 768 members warning them that cheerleaders should be provided for events "regardless of whether the girls' basketball team wanted and/or asked for them."

Last February, p.e. teachers in California asked for cheerleaders to attend boys' and girls' games "in the same number, and with equal enthusiasm." Could that be any more arbitrary? How do you measure levels of enthusiasm? Would parents then file complaints that the cheerleaders at boys' games were unfairly more enthusiastic? "Dear Mr. School Board President -- At my daughter's game, the cheerleaders were at least 10 to 15 percent less excited than at the boys' game last week, and I really think you should do something about it."

This past fall, Westborough High School in the Boston suburbs began mandating cheerleaders appear at all varsity athletic events. "In our minds," said Athletic Director Brian Callaghan, possibly in the middle of an interview for the NHL's top p.r. position, "there's no major or minor sports."