Rant Sports – In 1954, the Baltimore Colts began a trend that was initially viewed as a novelty act but would go on to forever change the landscape of the NFL. This change to football had nothing to do with the on-field product, though, it was the invention of cheerleading teams in the league.
Since the Colts decided to form their own cheerleading team there has been a boon of teams who have picked up the trend of having their own cheer squad, but no team has had a bigger impact on the status of cheerleaders in the NFL than the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys have used their status as one of the most popular football teams in the United States since the early 1970s to develop their cheerleading team into an entity that matches the on-field product in popularity. This boon in popularity began in 1979 and 1980 with the creation of the successful films Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders I and II, which centered around a reporter going under cover to try out for the cheerleading team. In 2006 Country Music Television decided that they wanted to try and build off the success this movie had when the created a show surrounding the try out process of Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. The show has been arguably the network’s most successful show ever and has only further grown the image of the Cowboys cheerleaders.
Almost every other franchise throughout the NFL has taken a page from the Cowboys book to create their own cheerleading team, with 26 out of 32 teams having one during the 2013 season. Almost each and every one of these teams that created a team have developed a number of sources to access pictures to their cheerleaders ranging from twitter pages to their own online websites. In the process the idea of cheerleaders in the NFL has become the norm, and we have begun to see cheerleaders as sex symbols of their respective teams.
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