Cheerleading is NOT a sport, so says University of Alabama

Alabama is tied for 92nd in engineering (Auburn is 57th), according to U.S. News' 2008 (most recent I could find) rankings. It's MIT vs. Stanford for the engineering title.

 

WFW

 

In fact, that's the precise reason I have an irrational insanity about the "cheerleading-as-a-sport" argument.

In the mid-1980s, I was serving on the athletic council of the private grade school/junior high I had graduated from a decade or so earlier. I had three younger siblings still in the school and participating in sports.

The youngest was my 16-years-younger sister, who was an outstanding athlete in all 3 traditional team sports (basketball, volleyball, and softball).

My father was working nights at the newspaper, and my mother wasn't too sports-savvy, but they were unhappy about how things had been run there -- a perfect-storm disaster situation of functionally-incompetent AND personally-abusive coaches for the younger siblings -- so since I did have time to do it, as they approached junior-high age my parents delegated me to serve on the athletic council to try to straighten things out.

It so happened that the school was deciding to shut down its football team, mainly because of a lack of competing teams to play and also skyrocketing costs.

At any rate, the decision was made to drop football, freeing up a couple thousand dollars for the athletic budget.

It was decided this money would be divided 50-50 between boys and girls sports. Previously, the overall athletic budget had been divided pretty much 50-50 ... except for football.


I had been fine with that for several reasons,

1) My 12-year-younger brother was still in school and liked to play football;

2) ** I ** had played football there during my own glory days;

3) There really was no even remotely comparable girls' program the money could have been devoted to.

OK, well, anyway, the decision was eventually made to pull the plug on football and devote the money to other sports.

Previous to then, the school had had football, basketball and baseball for boys.

For girls they had had basketball and volleyball.

With football being dropped, they decided to try to get a soccer team going for the boys. (It sputtered on for a couple seasons IIRC.)

For the girls, the decision was going to be between softball and soccer. Since the local city rec department sponsored a soccer league, softball moved into the favorite's seat.

Until... HERE CAME THE CHEERLEADING MOTHERS.

Cheerleading had been previously sponsored as a 'separate activity' at the school for decades. They had gotten some money for uniforms, equipment, etc but most of their money had to come from fundraising bake sales etc etc. (For many years, they were the only girls athletic program to get any money at all.)

NOW, the cheerleading mothers had the smell of fresh green cash in their nostrils. They pulled an early-version "astroturf" attack at the athletic council meeting, sending a dozen or so mothers marching in and up to the microphone, and DEMANDED immediate status as a varsity sport, along with equal funding.

I was actually very diplomatic about the whole thing, trying to work out some deal where cheerleading would be classified as a "sanctioned athletic activity" and appropriate enough money for them to buy a new set of uniforms.

But the cheerleading mamas wanted unconditional victory. They wanted equal designation as one of the school's three official varsity girls' sports.

When I tried to step up to bat for softball, they immediately started kvetching about how a half dozen bats and two sets of catcher's gear could buy four sets of cheerleading outfits and about how softball was going to be a "money pit."

THEN they started in about how cheerleading "teaches our girls how to be young ladies," implying of course that more intense actual competitive sports did not.

I wasn't so polite after that. The battle was already lost; it was turning into one of those amen-chorus sessions, but I had to note that my sister looked perfectly acceptable as a "young lady" (more so than many of their little darlings) and it didn't particularly make her any less of a young lady if she could blast a line drive off the fence, fire the the runner out at first from deep short or hit a 20-foot jumper.

But they were already pricing out pom-poms, skimpy sweaters and spanky shorts.

Sweet Jesus.