Alright, so I was chilling on my couch the other day, flipping through channels, and I stumbled upon some NFL game. And I thought to myself, “Hey, how many of these football teams actually have cheerleaders?” I mean, you always see them on TV, right? So, I grabbed my phone and did a quick search.
Turns out, it’s not all of them. I started digging around, and it looks like the National Football League, you know, the NFL, has a bunch of teams, 32 to be exact. But get this, only 24 of them have cheerleaders. Can you believe it?
So, I got curious and made a list. I went through each team one by one. It was kind of a pain, but I wanted to see the full picture. I checked their official websites, fan pages, and even some news articles. I was like a detective on a mission, piecing together this cheerleader puzzle.
- First off, the Baltimore Colts, back in 1954, they were the first ones to have cheerleaders. How cool is that?
- Then I found out about this thing called the “Battle of the NFL Cheerleaders.” It was like a big competition where two cheerleaders from each team would go head-to-head. They started this in 1979.
After hours of searching, I finally had my list. It showed that 8 teams are currently not in the cheerleader game: the Buffalo Bills, Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, Los Angeles Chargers, Pittsburgh Steelers, and San Francisco 49ers. These teams don’t have cheerleaders on their sidelines.
I even found some interesting tidbits during my research. For example, some folks think that NFL cheerleading is a bit outdated and sexist. And there have been some lawsuits from cheerleaders against their teams. It’s a whole can of worms.
Oh, and get this, in 2022, a transgender woman named Justine Lindsay made the Carolina Panthers cheerleading squad. She’s the first openly transgender person to cheer in the NFL. That’s pretty groundbreaking, right?
And there’s this thing called the Pro Bowl. It’s like an all-star game for cheerleaders. One cheerleader from each team gets to go to Hawaii and represent their team. That sounds like a pretty sweet gig if you ask me.
Some Famous Faces
I also found out that some famous people were once NFL cheerleaders. Like, Stacy Keibler, she was a cheerleader for the Baltimore Ravens. And Carmella, the WWE wrestler, she cheered for the New England Patriots. It’s kind of cool to see where some of these folks got their start.
So yeah, that was my little adventure into the world of NFL cheerleaders. It was way more interesting than I thought it would be. I went in thinking it was just a simple question, but it turned out to be a whole rabbit hole of information. Who knew?
