Every now and then you might get a little something I would like to call a Cheer Rant out of me for the weekly Pro Cheerleading Blog post. If you have listened to the podcast, you may remember that Season 3 included lots of Cheer Rants about NBA front office management being disrespectful in the way they dismantled their all-female dance teams. I gradually stopped foaming at the mouth over the formation of coed dance crews named after area codes and overweight/dad bod male dance teams. It was a long process and I admittedly was in my feelings, but I managed to work through it. You’re welcome lol.
My Cheer Rants will very much capture how I’m passionately feeling in the heat of the moment and then I’ll eventually calm down and reach a more rational space. I haven’t decided yet whether I will take the liberty to curse or not – there’s something about seeing curse words in writing that makes it seem extra naughty. If I get to pecking at this keyboard and it fits the mood though, then so be it. This will be my very first Cheer Rant of 2020, so here’s what the heck I am fired up about…
WHY IS IT SO HARD TO RESEARCH BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT THIS YEAR’S PRO BOWL CHEERLEADERS?????
I thought it was hard scraping together information about the 2019 Pro Bowl Cheerleaders for our “Simply the Best” episode, but this year has it beat! It was very discouraging to see that there wasn’t enough information out there on each young woman to record an episode to launch Season 5 of the podcast. I’m not talking about personally identifiable information like their first and last name or birthday. And no, I’m not talking about information like their favorite food or favorite thing about being a cheerleader for their team. Instead of an episode, we've been introducing each Pro Bowl Cheerleader grouped by their NFL division on Instagram but it's super scarce on information.
I’m just saying, can we please learn a little more about these ladies than their hometown, job title, and number of years on the squad?! These women are receiving the highest honor an NFL cheerleader could obtain in their career so one would think it would warrant a little extra special attention to at least highlight the achievements of the women selected to represent their teams at Pro Bowl. If it weren’t for a few of the team social media posts on Instagram, I would have really been working with minimal information from the team websites. Some of the websites had outdated information and a couple of them didn’t even have bios for the squad at all! Come on, really!? Surely there are media personnel from the team front offices who can help develop content to promote their squad of talented community ambassadors. Perhaps it would help generate interest for corporate partnerships for appearances or community relations events if your fan base is able to connect with the squad members who share common interests.
It’s a rather small investment but it could pay off. If you want an example of significant financial investment in an NFL cheerleading team paying off big time, please see Exhibit A – the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. I am not even going to get started down that rabbit hole of how much resources are provided to this squad that enables them to be such a successful marketing machine for the Dallas Cowboys organization. It’s not even about the potential financial payoff from teams devoting resources to their squads so that they can better market themselves. Selfishly, it’s about the fact that the Pro Cheerleading Podcast can’t even celebrate what is essentially the Super Bowl of NFL cheerleading by putting a bright spotlight on how amazing the Pro Bowl cheerleaders truly are for everyone to see!
Deep fat sigh…well on a somewhat brighter note, I will be traveling to Orlando next week to attend Pro Bowl (by myself this time because these trips cost money, please see Exhibit B, a link so y’all can contribute to our Patreon!). Anyway, I can’t wait for the Pep Rally the day before the game at Disney Springs where each Pro Bowl cheerleader is introduced and can say a few words about themselves to demonstrate why they were selected to represent their team. It’s a moment where these women finally get the recognition they deserve, and I look forward to learning more about each one and sharing that info with you all. This year I also am excited to actually attend the Pro Bowl football game since Orlando had a torrential downpour for pretty much 24 hours the day of last year’s game and Brittany and I decided not to go. Why they don’t just move the Pro Bowl back to Hawaii is beyond me and probably worthy of another paragraph but hopefully Orlando will act right and warm up already so it can be a pleasant and balmy weekend!
Okay, my Cheer Rant is over!