The NFL has finally cracked the code for falling ratings and dwindling fan trust. Forget better refereeing. Forget safer play. Forget treating fans with respect. Their solution? Fire women cheerleaders—and replace them with gay men. Yes, really.
Minnesota Vikings has a man as their new lead cheerleader.
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) August 12, 2025
As if you needed another reason to avoid the NFL and Minnesota.pic.twitter.com/ofo3vI7qpw
Last week, the Minnesota Vikings unveiled their new cheerleaders for fans to gawk at—men. Blaize Shiek and Louie Conn were named to the 35-person squad via a promotional Instagram post declaring, “The next generation of cheer has arrived!” The next generation? Cheerleading has existed since the 19th century. And people are rightfully upset, gay men replacing traditionally attractive women rub fans the wrong way. What used to be entertainment has now devolved into tokenism, with teams parading characters like rare Pokémon.
And of course this is happening in Minnesota, a state run by Gov. Tim Walz. I’m not sure who’s more effeminate, the cheerleaders or Walz. Considering the fact that Walz has turned Minnesota into a testing ground for progressive experiments, it’s no shock the Vikings are following suit. When your state leadership celebrates weakness over strength, the culture around it follows.
The weirdest thing is all the comments online defending this as “normal.” People claim that cheer has always had men in it, and they’re not wrong, but they do miss the mark slightly. Invented in the late 19th century, the men who did cheer literally threw their female counterparts in the air and caught them; an impressive feat of strength. Men in cheer today are literally replacing women and taking their pom poms, and feminists are applauding. Hey ladies, if you truly cared about women, you wouldn’t be supporting this.
Replacing women with men in crop tops who couldn’t play football if their lives depended on it isn’t empowerment. This is just virtue signalling to win social points from people who don’t even watch the sport.
I mean, I can’t be the only one that remembers when the league cracked down on end-zone celebrations and fined players for being too flashy can I? Finger guns are a no-go, but being flashy is okay if you’re a bottom and can swing your hips? For an organization devoted to “entertainment,” these guys suck.
There is zero upside here. Players don’t respect it. Fans don’t want it. Nobody wins. But this is part of a broader war on masculinity in America. It’s in schools, where boys are medicated for being energetic. We see it in media, where movies portray men as idiots or predators. We see it in politics, where “toxic masculinity” is blamed for every social ill. Now, we see it on the football field, where strength is mocked and weakness is celebrated.
Turns out, though, that this was the line. Fans are starting to walk. They could handle the BLM end-zone paint, and altruistic virtue signalling about equality, and even the pride stickers on the sides of players' helmets; but what they couldn’t deal with was actually seeing it realized: men shoving their testicles in front of the camera for the world to see.
So how did the NFL respond to these "rightfully" upset fans? A spokesman for the team said: “While many fans may be seeing male cheerleaders for the first time at Vikings games, male cheerleaders have been part of previous Vikings teams and have long been associated with collegiate and professional cheerleading," the team said in a statement. So in other words: kick rocks, we don’t care about you.”
The cheerleaders Blaize and Louie have responded as well, posting a photo to Instagram with the caption “Wait… did someone say our name?” The post has tens of thousands of likes, along with comments filled with either fake stories or women eager to score virtue points by congratulating them. The dead internet theory is proving to be more and more true by the day.
The thing is: football doesn’t survive on hashtags. It survives on men who tune in, buy tickets, and raise their sons to love the game. By replacing women with weak men, the NFL is alienating the very audience that built it. Fans don’t want tokenism, they don’t want social experiments, and they don’t want their Sunday tradition turned into another lecture on “inclusion.”
The league can keep pretending this is progress. But what it’s really doing is eroding its own foundation. Because no matter how many likes those Instagram posts rack up, the truth is simple: fans didn’t ask for this. And if the NFL keeps insisting otherwise, they’re in for a rude awakening.
Conversation