National Football League Cheerleading

Twenty-five of the thirty-two National Football League (NFL) teams have cheerleading squads who perform on the sideline during games. In 1954, the Baltimore Colts became the first NFL team to have cheerleaders. Apart from the New York Giants, every current NFL franchise has had cheerleaders at some point in its history. Cheerleading in the NFL is a part-time job. In addition to their main duties of cheering during football games, cheerleaders may have other responsibilities related to marketing the team for which they cheer, such as paid appearances, photoshoots, and charity events. As well as being a mainstay of American football culture, cheerleaders are one of the biggest entertainment groups to regularly perform for the United States Armed Forces overseas with performances and tours being enlisted by the United Service Organizations (USO). Teams send their variety show, an elite group of their best members, to perform combination shows of dance, music, baton twirling, acrobatics, gymnastics, and more. In 1996, the San Francisco 49ers Cheerleaders and their director helicoptered into Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War with the USO and the U.S. Army. In February 2007, the Buffalo Bills sent a squad of eight along with their choreographer into the warzone of Iraq. The U.S. troops in Korea have been entertained during the holiday season with the USO's Bob Hope Tour.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “NFL cheerleading”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

National Football League Cheerleading is professional cheerleading organization for the NFL, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶