ABSTRACT
Just when it became obvious that professional football had supplanted Major League Baseball as the most popular spectator sport in America, the NFL found itself being upstaged by one of its sideshow attractions. Bruce Newman addressed the rise of pro football cheerleaders in an article appearing in Sports Illustrated:
Goodness knows, the only thing anybody talks about anymore is S-E-X and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Just last week, Ann Landers had to contend with an enraged reader complaining about the trend toward “older, sexier, and more naked cheerleaders” in the NFL. “Talented baton twirlers and really good dancing … don’t mean a thing,” the infuriated correspondent said, asking Ann how she felt about such an “appalling commentary on American taste.” How Ann felt was that such preferences were the “last gasps of a dying civilization.”
Right. Certainly, whatever Dallas cheerleaders started six years ago, with their plunging necklines winking belly buttons, has spread through the rest of the NFL like a social disease.
