He paired innovations with a desire for control
October 30, 2024 2:08 PM Subscribe
Nationwide, just over a million children, mostly girls, participate in cheer each year (some estimates are even higher), more than the number who play softball or lacrosse. And almost every part of that world is dominated by a single company: Varsity Spirit. It’s hard to cheer at the youth, high school or collegiate level without putting money in the company’s pocket. from How Cheerleading Became So Acrobatic, Dangerous and Popular [NY Times Magazine; ungated]
Related: The Photo the Dallas Cowboys Never Wanted the Public to See [Texas Monthly; ungated]
Related: The Photo the Dallas Cowboys Never Wanted the Public to See [Texas Monthly; ungated]
I once had the misfortune of staying at the Disneyland Hotel while a cheer competition was in town. I asked at the desk if we could possibly move to a bigger room and was told that any room other than single king bedrooms were completely booked out in the entire resort, because many of the cheer teams were sneakily piling a half-dozen girls or more plus moms and coaches into rooms designed to sleep families of four. It felt like you couldn't throw a rock in the hotel without hitting a six-year-old in heavy makeup and booty shorts doing the splits. It was, if I'm honest, one of the most stressful hotel stays I've ever experienced.
posted by potrzebie at 3:11 PM on October 30 [10 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 3:11 PM on October 30 [10 favorites]
Parents have reported spending upward of $10,000 a year per child in competitive cheer, with Varsity controlling, by some estimates, more than 80 percent of that market.
No need to write this sentence like this. It should be easy to find parents paying that much and far more. That's basically the going rate for any competitive club sport, be it gymnastics, cheer, soccer, whatever. Some clubs separate the fees for the sport from the fees for transportation, equipment, whatever, which can be substantial if you are crossing the nation, and some include them.
My sister was a college cheerleader at a D2 school - no scholarships, no appearance fees, they even used their faces on a billboard once without even telling them. And she got plenty of injuries between high school and college doing it. I played football in high school - the school generally paid for football injuries and equipment, and travel. Cheer was all out of the parents' pocket.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:16 PM on October 30 [13 favorites]
No need to write this sentence like this. It should be easy to find parents paying that much and far more. That's basically the going rate for any competitive club sport, be it gymnastics, cheer, soccer, whatever. Some clubs separate the fees for the sport from the fees for transportation, equipment, whatever, which can be substantial if you are crossing the nation, and some include them.
My sister was a college cheerleader at a D2 school - no scholarships, no appearance fees, they even used their faces on a billboard once without even telling them. And she got plenty of injuries between high school and college doing it. I played football in high school - the school generally paid for football injuries and equipment, and travel. Cheer was all out of the parents' pocket.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:16 PM on October 30 [13 favorites]
"A single extremely rich white man ruins a thing" could be a headline for many possible articles.
posted by JHarris at 3:21 PM on October 30 [32 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 3:21 PM on October 30 [32 favorites]
Once again, it's worth reading Leverage showrunner John Rodgers' writeup on why they did cheerleading as an episode topic:
Every year the writers come in with three or four ideas for episodes. Jeremy Bernstein (@fajitas) led with two crime-y ones, and then said "Also, cheerleading."posted by NoxAeternum at 5:09 PM on October 30 [31 favorites]
We'd joked about it before. The auditorium we scouted for another episode was hosting a cheerleading competition at the time, and of course all the guys said "Cheerleading episode!!" Har-de-har. So at first I thought he was joking.
Then he laid out the stats, and all I kept saying was "Jesus Murphy." And then he laid out the reason for the stats, and Downey and I said "That is ... actual villainy." To be fair, I'll admit I was still a little dubious about whether we could make the episode work, so we had Jer present the info to the writer's room.
It was the angriest I've seen the room since Season Two.
Going much further into backstory will take us the closest to "actionable" we've come in a while, so let's just say there are several companies which indeed practice the business model -- by which I mean wide-scale, boggling efficient grift -- we detail in the episode. A hundred-something national championships. Force you to buy insurance that's never paid out. Fighting efforts to increase safety standards, because better safety standards would interfere with their ability to license and profit off cheerleading camps, etc, etc. Pretty girls in wheelchairs because of some assholes in suits. Using the real world model, we went to work.
This does appear to be a subset of the club sports problem - i don’t think cheer as a sport is particularly problematic, but certainly the way club sports is set up is coercive and financially ruinous for many. I’m hoping we can avoid blaming parents fully for these kinds of situations here - if it helps just substitute “soccer” for “cheer” and you probably know someone currently going into debt because their kid is on a a travel team because collective psychosis has made this socially desirable. Cheer appears to be even more of an issue because instead of a basis in youth sports you have this monoculture “cheer event” thing run by a single corporation.
I say this as someone who routinely works with youth sports in a professional capacity - the western world has gone completely bonkers in our relationship to kids’ athletics. It’s not doing anyone any good except the people running the leagues. It’s approaching “kid actor” levels of dysfunction and needs fundamental revisiting.
posted by q*ben at 5:11 PM on October 30 [24 favorites]
I say this as someone who routinely works with youth sports in a professional capacity - the western world has gone completely bonkers in our relationship to kids’ athletics. It’s not doing anyone any good except the people running the leagues. It’s approaching “kid actor” levels of dysfunction and needs fundamental revisiting.
posted by q*ben at 5:11 PM on October 30 [24 favorites]
Nice to see Matt Stoller mentioned prominently in this article. He has been working the monopoly beat on many different companies and is definitel worth a follow. I've learned so much from his writing.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=matt+stoller+cheerleading
posted by pthomas745 at 5:38 PM on October 30 [9 favorites]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=matt+stoller+cheerleading
posted by pthomas745 at 5:38 PM on October 30 [9 favorites]
It seems to me that many, if not most, parents wind up paying a lot more in fees and travel costs for their kids to compete on club/travel teams in middle school and high school than they wind up receiving in scholarships to be on college squads.
posted by Ranucci at 6:12 PM on October 30 [5 favorites]
posted by Ranucci at 6:12 PM on October 30 [5 favorites]
I think the hope is that it's also a big benefit to college applications and thanks to Nox for mentioning Leverage because it's the first thing I think of whenever I remember the now closed cheer academy that was in the neighborhood. They had a a definitely affliation with Varsity.
It's since closed and replaced now with a soccer academy, which....
posted by drewbage1847 at 6:19 PM on October 30 [3 favorites]
It's since closed and replaced now with a soccer academy, which....
posted by drewbage1847 at 6:19 PM on October 30 [3 favorites]
There are so many entries in that article that scream OF COURSE OUR MORALLY VACANT ENTERPRISE THAT WILLFULLY HARMS YOUNG WOMEN AT SCALE WAS SHOVED DOWN YOUR THROATS BY PRIVATE FUCKING EQUITY; hard to choose, but i’ll pick this one:
Varsity introduced other practices that many parents did notice. For the Summit, held at Disney World, Varsity bought four-day Disney “park hopper” passes in bulk for $173.24 apiece and sold them back to parents for $380, according to internal documents. The company’s Stay to Play program required teams to book rooms at Varsity-aligned hotels during some competitions. Parents protested they were overpaying — the very same rooms were often available for less online. What many didn’t know was that Varsity received a guaranteed $20 per room per night, according to an expert report later prepared on behalf of parents as part of a class-action suit. “It would not be good for our customers to know how much revenue we are generating in hotel rebates,” an internal Varsity memo warned.
posted by jerome powell buys his sweatbands in bulk only at 6:20 PM on October 30 [11 favorites]
Varsity introduced other practices that many parents did notice. For the Summit, held at Disney World, Varsity bought four-day Disney “park hopper” passes in bulk for $173.24 apiece and sold them back to parents for $380, according to internal documents. The company’s Stay to Play program required teams to book rooms at Varsity-aligned hotels during some competitions. Parents protested they were overpaying — the very same rooms were often available for less online. What many didn’t know was that Varsity received a guaranteed $20 per room per night, according to an expert report later prepared on behalf of parents as part of a class-action suit. “It would not be good for our customers to know how much revenue we are generating in hotel rebates,” an internal Varsity memo warned.
posted by jerome powell buys his sweatbands in bulk only at 6:20 PM on October 30 [11 favorites]
As someone who has done a LOT of club sports with my children, yes, it always feels like a bit of a scam. Let's talk about the Olympic Development Program teams...
Garbage.
Two of my sons were able to get admitted to colleges because of their sport abilities. And they got into very good schools. Which were/are very expensive. But all the cash we spent to keep them on the club teams, and pay to send them to the Junior Olympics tournaments. Wow.
The fact that female cheer has a terrible backstory, doesn't surprise me at all...
posted by Windopaene at 9:00 PM on October 30 [5 favorites]
Garbage.
Two of my sons were able to get admitted to colleges because of their sport abilities. And they got into very good schools. Which were/are very expensive. But all the cash we spent to keep them on the club teams, and pay to send them to the Junior Olympics tournaments. Wow.
The fact that female cheer has a terrible backstory, doesn't surprise me at all...
posted by Windopaene at 9:00 PM on October 30 [5 favorites]
I mean, schools like to admit kids who do club sports because their parents have very amply demonstrated that they are willing and able to throw huge quantities of money away on their children. Same reason schools like to admit kids who went to private school. It's signalling all the way down.
posted by potrzebie at 10:49 PM on October 30 [7 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 10:49 PM on October 30 [7 favorites]
Remember during the pandemic lockdowns when we all binge watched Cheer and were shocked at how poorly Varsity treated the athletes and their families? And the follow up about brain injuries in cheerleading?
posted by autopilot at 1:41 AM on October 31 [5 favorites]
posted by autopilot at 1:41 AM on October 31 [5 favorites]
Mod note: One comment removed and the commentator banned for a week for attacking another member. If anything remotely like that happens again, the ban will be permanent.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:40 AM on October 31 [6 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:40 AM on October 31 [6 favorites]
Competitive cheerleading gives me the creeps. From the monopoly, to the expense, to the sexualizing it's just one wrong thing on top of another. Just like football, parents should do their best to keep their kids away from it entirely.
posted by tommasz at 6:46 AM on October 31 [2 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 6:46 AM on October 31 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Another comment removed. Let's avoid generalizations like 'cheerleading parents and transphobes are pretty much the same'
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:22 AM on October 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:22 AM on October 31 [1 favorite]
Thank you, Brandon, and the rest of the Metafilter Staff. Active moderation is what keeps me coming back to this site, the only site I continue to regularly visit after 15 years.
Part of these thoughts are in response to the now removed comment(s) but more generally are my growing sentiments as I live and interact with people… people who are working to survive the day to day, people who are consumed with concern about their lives and families, people who want to see their children be happy and succeed, people who are just so damned angry, people who disagree with many of my core beliefs.
The last few threads that have drawn my attention and I've engaged in have had had this partial focus of comments that seek to generalize and condense a person or groups of people into monoliths so that they can be attacked, derided, and dismissed.
It is so easy to say that groups of people, people such as cheerleading parents, people who vote for trump, people who do not agree with me on something that I hold dear… are simply hateful, horrible, irredeemable people… but in my experience that is not true for most people. Also, I have never witnessed someone angrily deriding someone else for their beliefs actively drive change.
People are nuanced, people are misinformed, people are flawed and I have come to the point where I do not have enough anger or malice for those who are not in positions of power, who did not logic themselves into hateful beliefs, or are not directly mistreating others. That does not mean that people who believe these things are not doing harm, but if it is not intentional then I am going to try and have a fucking conversation with them before I throw them into my bucket of irredeemable human beings while reserving my true ire for fucks like Jeff Webb.
The question I keep coming back to in all of this is pretty simple:
Where is the empathy?
I can disagree vehemently with trump voters or parents who make poor decisions that put their children in danger and have still have empathy for them. To try and understand why they believe what they do… in part because I do not know of a better way to change a person’s mind.
I don’t fucking know…
I know that I’m tired, I know that at the end of the day we’re just fucking monkeys with shoes, and I know that I don’t want to live in a world where we immediately dismiss a person for one aspect of their being instead of talking to each other and trying to work together.
Except for Jeff Webb. Fuck you Jeff Webb.
posted by Quack at 8:36 AM on October 31 [5 favorites]
Part of these thoughts are in response to the now removed comment(s) but more generally are my growing sentiments as I live and interact with people… people who are working to survive the day to day, people who are consumed with concern about their lives and families, people who want to see their children be happy and succeed, people who are just so damned angry, people who disagree with many of my core beliefs.
The last few threads that have drawn my attention and I've engaged in have had had this partial focus of comments that seek to generalize and condense a person or groups of people into monoliths so that they can be attacked, derided, and dismissed.
It is so easy to say that groups of people, people such as cheerleading parents, people who vote for trump, people who do not agree with me on something that I hold dear… are simply hateful, horrible, irredeemable people… but in my experience that is not true for most people. Also, I have never witnessed someone angrily deriding someone else for their beliefs actively drive change.
People are nuanced, people are misinformed, people are flawed and I have come to the point where I do not have enough anger or malice for those who are not in positions of power, who did not logic themselves into hateful beliefs, or are not directly mistreating others. That does not mean that people who believe these things are not doing harm, but if it is not intentional then I am going to try and have a fucking conversation with them before I throw them into my bucket of irredeemable human beings while reserving my true ire for fucks like Jeff Webb.
The question I keep coming back to in all of this is pretty simple:
Where is the empathy?
I can disagree vehemently with trump voters or parents who make poor decisions that put their children in danger and have still have empathy for them. To try and understand why they believe what they do… in part because I do not know of a better way to change a person’s mind.
I don’t fucking know…
I know that I’m tired, I know that at the end of the day we’re just fucking monkeys with shoes, and I know that I don’t want to live in a world where we immediately dismiss a person for one aspect of their being instead of talking to each other and trying to work together.
Except for Jeff Webb. Fuck you Jeff Webb.
posted by Quack at 8:36 AM on October 31 [5 favorites]
Enpathy is a lot harder when you are scared or in pain yourself. We should still make an effort to cultivate our ability to see the worth and humanity in other people, but it isn't a trivial request to make of someone who feels like they are teetering on the edge of collapse
The class difference here is profound. Most of the people I know can't afford to have children. Their lives and health have never been stable enough for that. When you are watching friends begging money from other broke friends to afford cancer drugs, the idea of pouring thousands of dollars into a child's hobby is hard to fathom. That isn't to say the people doing so are bad people, but it is a very hard problem to empathize with on any but the most abstract level.
The failure here is systemic. Schools should be protecting kids and families from financial predators. Reasonable limits should be set to keep kids safe when involved in athletics instead of adults competing to outdo eachother at their expense. And access to athletic programs should be available to all kids, regardless of their parents wealth.
Ideally parents would refuse to pay the money or subject their kids to this stuff. But social pressures exist and a whole machine exists to sell them the idea that this is nevessary to be good parents. Any solution that involves expecting lots of independently ignore social pressure is doomed to fail.
But also, fuck Jeff Webb.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:37 AM on October 31 [3 favorites]
The class difference here is profound. Most of the people I know can't afford to have children. Their lives and health have never been stable enough for that. When you are watching friends begging money from other broke friends to afford cancer drugs, the idea of pouring thousands of dollars into a child's hobby is hard to fathom. That isn't to say the people doing so are bad people, but it is a very hard problem to empathize with on any but the most abstract level.
The failure here is systemic. Schools should be protecting kids and families from financial predators. Reasonable limits should be set to keep kids safe when involved in athletics instead of adults competing to outdo eachother at their expense. And access to athletic programs should be available to all kids, regardless of their parents wealth.
Ideally parents would refuse to pay the money or subject their kids to this stuff. But social pressures exist and a whole machine exists to sell them the idea that this is nevessary to be good parents. Any solution that involves expecting lots of independently ignore social pressure is doomed to fail.
But also, fuck Jeff Webb.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:37 AM on October 31 [3 favorites]
One of the telling things about Bain Capital cheer is that it’s separate from schools, right? There’s plenty to be unhappy about “sideline cheer” but apparently not this.
posted by clew at 10:36 AM on October 31 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 10:36 AM on October 31 [2 favorites]
whatever.... i stand by what I said
posted by kokaku at 12:20 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]
posted by kokaku at 12:20 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]
where's the empathy? burned out of my system by a country that is way too close to electing a literal monster who is in charge of a party of monsters who are apparently supported by millions of monsters.
posted by kokaku at 12:40 PM on October 31 [2 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 12:40 PM on October 31 [2 favorites]
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