How manly do you like your male cheerleaders?

Gender norms and cheerleading norms are always in flux, each at their own pace. Sometimes they align, and sometimes they clash.

Just when you thought the NFL might have learned its lesson by watching Bud Light and Jaguar, or by reflecting on their own business metrics during the reign of Colin Kaepernick, here come the Minnesota Vikings.

Like the team itself and the plundering warrior society from whom they take their name, a male will lead the Vikings' cheer squad for the 2025-26 season. Blaize Shiek will be the first cheer captain in NFL history. In the team's social media videos, Shiek and the Viking's other male cheerleader, Louie Conn, are doing the same routines with the same style of movements and artistic expression as the female cheerleaders.

Let's be clear: neither Shiek nor Conn identify as female. This is not a trans issue. There is no subterfuge here.

Several commentators who are normally clear-eyed on the subjects of men in women's spaces and sex differences in physical endeavors are dismissing criticisms of male NFL cheerleaders on two grounds. First, they point out that cheer squads have always had males. They note that Ronald Reagan, Mitt Romney, and other conservative or traditionally masculine men were on their college's cheer or pep squads; and post pictures of men on today's collegiate cheer teams. Second, they say this is a question of "gender conforming roles" rather than "sex-based differences."

Both perspectives overlook how the role and nature of cheerleading has evolved.

For the first half of the 20th century, cheerleading was predominantly male and quintessentially masculine. "Cheer leader" was literal and functional in the days of Reagan. They were there to lead and coordinate the crowd, and were "respected role models of manliness and success." The more common term was "Yell Leaders," which is still the title of a prestigious cadre of five male students who lead cheers at Texas A&M.

During and after World War II, women joined and took over cheerleading squads, shaping cheerleading into its more familiar form: a hybrid of dance and gymnastics, with an increasing emphasis on sex-based aesthetics. Within a few decades, cheerleading had pivoted 180 degrees to being stereotypically and proudly feminine. By 1972, The New York Times reported from a cheer competition at Madison Square Garden that "the rah-rah world of cheerleading had no room on the squad for Gloria Steinem, Germain Greer and other Women's Lib killjoys."

One of the cheerleaders the Times interviewed presaged cheerleading's bifurcation, saying "Men and women are created with different shapes... [A] man can't do a pompon (sic) routine and I can't play quarterback for Notre Dame."

One branch became a rigorous athletic endeavor. Modern cheerleading or sport cheer has distinct roles that are optimized by the sex-based differences between men and women: the base, back spot, and flyer.

The base and the flyer are just what they sound like. You're not going to have a man be your flyer; and, if you have men on the squad, you want them on the base. The back spot is like a safety monitor. He or she stands behind the wall, calling out cues to ensure proper execution and safety. More importantly, they are there to catch anyone who falls if something goes wrong.

Women can and do perform all of these roles. But like any other sport or physical endeavor, the physical capacities of the individuals involved set the ceiling for the team's output.

For elite co-ed cheer squads, like you would see on the sidelines of an SEC football game, the base of a wall or pyramid is going to be all-male. Larger, stronger individuals make the base sturdier, allowing the wall or pyramid to get higher and more complex. Males seldomly form the second tier of the structure because they would be too heavy even for the males below, limiting the number of women who could go to the top. The increased strength and power production of the males boosts the flyers higher, and then provide a more reliably safe catch as the flyers accelerate towards the ground from these higher heights.

The NFL has hewed to the other, earlier branch of cheerleading (and anti-feminism).

In the classic cheerleading movie "Bring It On," Kirsten Dunst as the cheer captain tells one of her cheerleaders, "This is not a democracy. It's a cheer-ocracy."

A cheer-ocracy is also not a strict meritocracy.

In any sport, coaches don't just take the top players at tryouts. They look for the right blend of players for their style of play, team tactics, and team culture. Collegiate and pro teams have to weigh an increasing number of administrative or regulatory factors: salary caps, available budget, player eligibility, how long they expect the player to stay. The best player may not be the right player, and therefore won't make the team.

The same applies to cheer squads. There is a limited number of roster spots. Maybe Sheik and Conn were the best performers at tryouts, with better moves, higher levels of athleticism, and more charisma than the first two females who didn't make the cut. But those aren't the only factors at play.

NFL cheerleading squads are not there to give aspiring cheerleaders—male or female—a place to be cheerleaders. They're not jobs programs. And NFL games are not a venue for indulgent self-expression or social engineeering, as the league (should have) learned during peak Kaepernick.

Cheerleading squads—like the players, mascots, broadcasters, concessionaires and every other employee—are there to maximize the fan experience. If each fan has an unequivocally positive, above-expectations experience at the stadium or watching the game at home, then everyone involved has done their job. That fan will keep coming back and spending their money. Providing that level of service requires the NFL and each team to know what fans want, in the aggregate and increasingly at the individual level, and then provide it.

How many fans will have their experience enhanced by the presence of male cheerleaders of the Shiek and Conn ilk, and how many will have their experience diminished or tarnished? What was the market research that led the Vikings to conclude that Sheik and Conn pom-pomming about will produce a positive return on investment?

Many women's sports teams have one or two males in their practice squad. The men are not there for themselves: they are there to make the women better.

Cheerleading carries that over from the training ground to game day.

Men provide the most value to cheerleading as a sport when they are literally supporting women. Having men as the base or backspot enables the female cheerleaders to do more in their sport, to push their limits and their performance higher. The better they perform, the more they enhance the fan experience.

In NFL-style cheerleading, males do not offer anything new athletically, nor at the intersection of aesthetics and performance. They neither improve nor improve upon the women around them. But if they improve the fan experience, more teams will add more male cheerleaders, and the gender norms for cheerleading might shift again.

Perhaps the future of cheerleading will once more be male, if not particularly masculine.

Men are the “base,” not the bottom.

Photo credit: Jitog.92 via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0.