Headline: Minnesota Vikings fans are canceling their season tickets after the team announced it has two male cheerleaders for the 2025 season.
Reality I: “The Vikings told NBC News that, so far, no fans have canceled their season tickets.”
Reality II: “The Minnesota Vikings are currently sold out of Stadium Builders Licenses at U.S. Bank Stadium. The only way to secure season tickets is to own a Stadium Builders License, but members of the Season Ticket Waitlist have the first chance to order when seats become available.”
Of all the stupid takes in the incredibly dumb “controversy” over the Vikings having male cheerleaders years after it became a thing in the NFL, the biggest come from people who say they will cancel their season tickets in reaction. The fact is that no one has and no one will.
This taunt is nothing but performance, designed to get attention (it gone mine), but it’s an empty gesture. Only an idiot would cancel season tickets to a popular NFL team with a waiting list. A team that has gone 34-17 under coach Kevin O’Connell with two playoff appearances. A team that looks stacked and could make a deep playoff run if first-time starter J.J. McCarthy develops into a top-flight quarterback.
Imagine canceling season tickets because the Vikings have two dudes (Blaize Shiek and Louie Conn) who dance on the sidelines and having to explain it to friends or family who were looking forward to a Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Related
We’ve seen this before. The Southern Baptist Convention called for a boycott of the Walt Disney Company for “what it saw as Disney’s promotion of a gay agenda.” The eight-year boycott was called off in June. The boycott included ESPN, owned by Disney, and I can guarantee you that no college football-loving Southern Baptist ever boycotted an SEC game on ESPN in solidarity. In fact, I had no idea the boycott was still going on, since Disney never changed its practices and college football continued to thrive.
The fact that there have been male cheerleaders in football forever and mainstream in the NFL as dancers since 2018 is what make this latest brouhaha all the more baffling. It’s clear that Shiek and Conn have triggered a small subset of [almost all of them] male fans. RK Russell, who is bi and played in the NFL, hit the nail on the head in a column for the Guardian, writing:
“The people expressing outrage over male cheerleaders on the Vikings aren’t talking about work ethic, talent or dedication. …
“This isn’t about performance at all. It’s about presence. It’s about the mere existence and visibility of men on NFL cheer squads who don’t conform to the rigid, outdated ideas of masculinity that so many use sport, and football in particular, to defend.
“What this backlash really reveals is not fear of change, but fear of visibility. The outrage over male cheerleaders isn’t about sports. It’s about control: over masculinity, over image, and over who gets to be seen and celebrated in public spaces or on the global stage of the NFL.”
I wish these people saying they’ll cancel their Vikings season tickets go ahead with it. They won’t be missed.
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