Ready? OK! C-H-E-E-R-L-E-A-D-I-N-G Is Not A Sport

I'm not an athlete, but I'd consider myself to be somewhat athletic. I played baseball for 12 years and basketball for about 6. I never could play football because my mom told me I was too small. Every year I heard a different excuse. Put on 10 lbs. Grow 6 inches. Stop wearing your sister's Ruby Red Slippers (The Wizard of Oz). And I obliged with each and every one of those demands, except for the last one. But still, no football. I guess you can say I've gotten over it. But I'll never get over people who say that cheerleading is a sport. Because it isn't.

There are many reasons as to why I feel this way. Cheerleading doesn't involve a ball, you only get hurt because the fatty who threw you in the air probably dropped you, and doing cartwheels is something you can excel at from about the age of 4. So I've taken the liberty of criticizing this, as well as other "sports" that people claim to have played in high school and/or college. And just because you got a varsity jacket does not exclude you from this list. There were people in my high school who had Varsity Choir jackets, and clearly, singing is not a sport. I do not expect any disagreement there.

For many years, I've gotten into arguments with people as to whether or not cheerleading is a sport. They claim the risks involved in it and how difficult it is to perform certain stunts. But the truth of the matter is that cheerleading does not involve any kind of natural or physical ability. I'm pretty sure that anybody can take up cheerleading at any point in time and be just as good and successful as everyone else. The only competition you have is if you're prettier than the other girls. And sometimes that's not even a requirement. I've seen some pretty disgusting, overweight cheerleaders in my day.

Some other "sports" that don't fit the bill include, but are not limited to: swimming, dancing, diving, equestrian, skiing, track and field, snowboarding, pretty much anything winter, and bowling. Although bowling does involve a ball, it is quite possibly the furthest thing from a sport. And don't complain to me about the difficulties of snowboarding and how it's so hard and the spins and flips in the air are cool. I don't give a shit. If you want to waste your parents hard-earned money on a piece of shit board and do flips and twirls in the air, be my guest. But please, don't make a mockery of people who actually are athletic and do things much more respectable.

I ran track in high school. I would consider myself a little better than average. I was fast, but I wasn't blowing by or blowing anyone. But never did I consider what I was doing to be a sport. It's more like an activity that takes a really long time to become decent at. I don't know how many hours I spent in my life running. And to what end? Once you stop running for a while, it's gone. All that hard work and time and energy spent for absolutely no reason. Same goes for every other activity I listed above. Same shit. It takes all this time out of you, but then it just vanishes once you realize what you're doing is fucking stupid.

Some college friends of mine were swimmers and God bless them because they were all great kids. But I still will not classify swimming as a sport. It involves moving your arms and legs in a really fast motion. And sure they were in elite shape and made people who use workout videos look like little virgins, but it's still not a sport. Same goes to the liberals who played Ultimate Frisbee on the Quad. You people are not athletes. You're just a bunch of tree-hugging Obama-loving assholes. When you become a parent one day, only purchase your child a varsity jacket if they played a real sport because you're going to end up with people like me telling your kids that, "I am better than you."