whaaaat?

[BigSoonerFan]

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Kinda like beauty pageants? or Boy Scout competitions?

"And the All-State for Eagles in the Hiking competition goes to....."

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Yeah I am sorry. All athletic competition outside of football, baseball, basketball and hockey is lame and does not count.

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Cheerleading started out as cheering for "real" sports. That says it all. Cheerleading competitors are separated by their artistic differences, not athletic ones, despite the fact that the girls (or guys) have to be athletic to do them.

[bugstud]

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cheerleading is easily one of the toughest sports athletically and on your body.

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Just because it is athletic does not make it a sport.

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so?

it's more atheltic than many all-male sports.

[tdarko]

eagles,

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Just because it is athletic does not make it a sport.

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The fact that they train hours and hours a day to compete in NCA Chamionships against other schools does though. A sport consists of a physical and mentally competitive activity carried out with a recreational purpose for competition, for self-enjoyment, to attain excellence, for the development of a skill, or some combination of these. Cheerleading has every bit of this. Just b/c you don't see it in the light of football doesn't mean that it doesn't require mental discipline, physical discipline, competition, etc.

[FoxwoodsFiend]

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eagles,

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Just because it is athletic does not make it a sport.

[/ QUOTE ]

The fact that they train hours and hours a day to compete in NCA Chamionships against other schools does though. A sport consists of a physical and mentally competitive activity carried out with a recreational purpose for competition, for self-enjoyment, to attain excellence, for the development of a skill, or some combination of these. Cheerleading has every bit of this. Just b/c you don't see it in the light of football doesn't mean that it doesn't require mental discipline, physical discipline, competition, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know it's hard to reach agreement on this, but it seems to me that for a physical activity to truly be a sport, there needs to be some interaction with one's opponent wherein the opponent can impede your ability to succeed. I think any physical activity that doesn't have this is really just a physical-skill pageant: everybody does things the same as they would if there were no opponents, and because they are doing so in the presence of other people doing the same thing the previously isolated, non-sport activity becomes a sport? That always struck me as weird.

And yes, I realize this means that most of track-and-field as well as golf aren't sports under my definition. But I'll bite that bullet if I can rule out things like skeet shooting, and ballroom dancing from being sports.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

I feel that any girl should be playing a 'real' sport rather than cheering on guys in theirs, but I guess that's neither here nor there.

(my high school (private) football team was the only one in our 17 team conference to have cheerleaders, which other schools thought was pretty pathetic).

in other parts of the country, I guess it's more respected.

[tuq]

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my gf was on one of the best coed HS cheerleading squads in the country

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Thinly veiled brag post.

Also yeah, the subject line is terrible. My curiosity finally overcame my better judgment.

[UMTerp]

Maryland was the first D1 school to offer scholarships to their competitive cheer team a few years back (it's a different squad than what cheers at a football or basketball game). I think it was primarily for Title IX reasons - I'd imagine other schools that want more schollies for their men's sports will follow suit: http://umterps.cstv.com/sports/comp-...042805aad.html

[tdarko]

tuq,

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Thinly veiled brag post.


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Many here have seen my gf, I wasn't bragging but trying to say that I have been around the boring ass "sport" for a long enough time to garner some kind of respect for what they do. Oh, and the quality of cheerleading squads has nothing to do with what they look like.

[tuq]

td,

I was joking. If I dated a cheerleader in HS I'd find a way to work that into a conversation too. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Also, I'm not sure if I consider it a sport more than I consider the spelling bee a sport, but there is obviously a lot of hard work put in to excelling at both.

[tolbiny]

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eagles,

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Just because it is athletic does not make it a sport.

[/ QUOTE ]

The fact that they train hours and hours a day to compete in NCA Chamionships against other schools does though. A sport consists of a physical and mentally competitive activity carried out with a recreational purpose for competition, for self-enjoyment, to attain excellence, for the development of a skill, or some combination of these. Cheerleading has every bit of this. Just b/c you don't see it in the light of football doesn't mean that it doesn't require mental discipline, physical discipline, competition, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know it's hard to reach agreement on this, but it seems to me that for a physical activity to truly be a sport, there needs to be some interaction with one's opponent wherein the opponent can impede your ability to succeed. I think any physical activity that doesn't have this is really just a physical-skill pageant: everybody does things the same as they would if there were no opponents, and because they are doing so in the presence of other people doing the same thing the previously isolated, non-sport activity becomes a sport? That always struck me as weird.

And yes, I realize this means that most of track-and-field as well as golf aren't sports under my definition. But I'll bite that bullet if I can rule out things like skeet shooting, and ballroom dancing from being sports.

[/ QUOTE ]

The purpose of sports as they were developed by the Greeks was to test the best warriors of areas against each other without having to kill/maim them in battle. Running, Javalin throwing, archerty Discus were related to wartime activites, but pitting the men "against" each other in some of these activites would be extremly wastefull as far as human life is concerened. There were some events with combatents (wrestlying), but for the most part original sports sought to take out a lot of the Human on Human interaction.