When I was in high school, our cheerleaders were really cute. And squeaky. Very perky. Good with a set of pom-poms. Nice tight formations. Voices that could cut through a tule fog.
Our pep rallies rocked. The gym was mostly full, and people knew when to stand up, sit down and fight-fight-fight. Everybody was wearing blue and gold.
Who didn’t love a pep rally? It got us out of fourth period.
We knew The Other Team Sucked and that We Were The Best. In case we needed reminding, our cheerleaders reminded us, screechily and emphatically. Did I mention they were cute?
The fact that We Weren’t Really The Best wasn’t an issue. I never held it against our cheerleaders that they didn’t remind us that The Other Team’s offensive line outweighed us by an average of 20 pounds, or that our quarterback had been sacked seven times in the last game, or that our record over the previous two seasons was a combined 2–16 - that wasn’t their job.
They were just there to get us fired up. And provide a little eye candy.
At both of which tasks they succeeded admirably.
Our football team still sucked.
Our ground game was nonexistent.
Our quarterback had no mobility, no field sense, no arm, no ideas. Every play was sent in, and when things got tough, you always knew what he was going to do: run up the middle. He loved to remind people that "I was the leading rusher in my Pop Warner league when I was 11," as if that had anything to do with his ability to find an open receiver in the end zone or call an audible that took into account what was going on in the secondary.
So, we got our asses kicked. We sucked, and everybody knew it. You’d never have known that if you just went to the pep rallies, of course, but outside of our little blue-and-gold world in the gym on Fridays, it was common knowledge that our team was pretty much the worst POS that our league had ever seen.
Heh. If I remember correctly, our head cheerleader ended up getting herself knocked up and had to marry the guy.