Ask A Male Cheerleader

Four: Harry Hammer (“H.H.”) Clark

H.H. Clark wrote the book on cheerleading.

OK, OK, he actually co-wrote it, with my fellow former University of Minnesota cheerleader George York. And – OK, OK, OK – maybe Just Yells isn’t the book on cheerleading nowadays. But that manly manual, published in 1927 by The Willis N. Bugbee Co., is inarguably the first book on cheerleading.

Yes, “manly.” During the legendary yell leader John E. Campbell’s lifetime, college cheerleading was an exclusive fraternity – literally. And, indeed, throughout Just Yells, cheerleaders are generically referred to as “men,” “chaps,” and “fellows.”

The importance of these gentlemanly generators of school spirit to the universities of the era is evidenced by their implementation of formal training programs for cheerleading candidates. In 1926, Clark founded one of the first: The School for Yell Leaders at his alma mater, Purdue University. With an enrollment limited to 30, the four-week training program was “composed principally of drill on form and lectures on mob psychology and the handling of crowds.”

It’s this innovation that earns Headmaster H.H. Clark the fourth of eight Ask A Male Cheerleader Two, Four, Six, Eight Who We Do Appreciate Awards.

Honorable Mention: Just Yells co-author George York

Dear Male Cheerleader:

Like you, I am a former college cheerleader who wants to be a “stuntman” again. Unlike you, I am a resident of New York, not Los Angeles. Is there a cheerleading squad for adults that I could tryout for here in “The Big Apple”?

East Side!

Dear East Side:

First and foremost: “West Side!”

Despite the fact that I’ve got Tupac Shakur’s “California Love” set to repeat on iTunes at the moment, I’ll spare you the extended lecture about how “you and I know it’s the best side” and answer your question.

Cheer New York, an adult team “by and for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Straight (LGBTS) communities,” is holding its tryouts later this month.

Cheer N.Y. will host two clinics in late July.

Clinic #1 (Orientation)

Wednesday, July 23

7-10 p.m.

Clinic #2 (Make-Up)

Monday, July 28

7-10 p.m.

Tryouts will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. on July 30, and – like the clinics – will be located in Midtown Manhattan. Contact Cheer New York at either (888) 671-7312 or info@cheerny.org to sign up and get the exact location.

Cheers!

Cheerleader Chad

Dear Male Cheerleader:

Like you, I am a former college cheerleader living in L.A. who wants to be a “stuntman” again — and I don’t mean one of those Hollywood daredevils who goes flying off rooftops during movie shoots. Is there a cheerleading squad for adults that I could tryout for, one which would allow me to dust off my stunting skills?

An Aspiring Stuntman

Dear Stuntman:

A “stuntman,” eh? Haven’t heard that term much since I left my home state of Wisconsin, where the majority of the four-year University of Wisconsin campuses have “Cheer & Stunt Teams” composed of female “cheerleaders” and male “stuntmen.” Who would’ve ever guessed that a state so far from Hollywood would have so many stuntmen?

But to answer your question, there is, indeed, a team out here in L.A. for adult men and women interested in cheerleading. Founded in 2001, Cheer Los Angeles is a nonprofit that raises money for charitable causes through cheer, dance and stunt performances. And the team happens to be holding tryouts next month.

Cheer L.A. will host three clinics in early August; candidates must attend at least one.

Clinic #1

Tuesday, August 5

7:30-10 p.m.

L.A. School of Gymnastics

8450 Higuera St.

Culver City, CA 90232

Clinic #2

Saturday, August 9

10 a.m.-12 noon

West Hollywood Park

647 N. San Vicente Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

Clinic #3

Sunday, August 10

10 a.m.-12 noon

West Hollywood Park

647 N. San Vicente Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

Tryouts will be held from 7:30 to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, August 13 at the L.A. School of Gymnastics. For more information, contact Cheer L.A. at either (310) 393-0207 or cheerla@earthlink.net.

Cheers!

Cheerleader Chad

Three: Lindley Bothwell

For legendary yell leader Lindley Bothwell, success was in the cards – literally.

In 1922, his fourth year as the “Yell King” of the University of Southern California, Bothwell led the first attempt at a sequential – or “animated” – card stunt. Created by the University of California Rally Committee for the 1910 “Big Game” between Berkeley and Stanford, card stunts were performed by special sections in the bleachers in which students would raise colored cards to create static pictures of mascots or spell out simple messages. But it wasn’t until 1924, when Bothwell was pursuing his third degree – in agriculture – at what is now known as Oregon State University, that the card stunt was successfully animated.

At Bothwell’s signal, 1,000 card-carrying students formed the image of the OSU Beaver during a game against the University of Oregon.

As the crowd went wild, the section flipped through four sequential “panels” that brought the Beaver’s tail down on Oregon’s signature O – smashing it out of sight.

So impressed was renowned Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne with the showmanship of the yell leader, whom he spotted while teaching a coaches clinic at OSU, that he recruited Bothwell to root for the famed Four Horsemen at the 1925 Rose Bowl. As the “Card Stunt King” led the cheers in Pasadena, Rockne out-coached the equally legendary Glenn “Pop” Warner to earn a 27-10 victory over Stanford.

After graduating from OSU, Bothwell returned to his native Southern California. While establishing a citrus empire that eventually encompassed 34 ranches and accumulating the largest collection of antique automobiles in the country, he also found time to serve as the advisor for the USC Yell Leaders – the spirit squad he had established in 1919 – for almost 60 years.

“Set yourself on fire,” Bothwell reportedly told the Yell Leaders, “and the crowd will catch fire, too.”

During his decades of devotion to USC, Bothwell founded a sister squad to the traditionally all-male Yell Leaders – the USC Song Girls – and earned a spot in the Guinness Book of Records for orchestrating a card stunt that incorporated more than 8,000 students. Despite all the accolades, however, this modest man encouraged his cheering charges to “have pride without arrogance and confidence without conceit.”

The comedian George Carlin, who died last night at the age of 71, once observed: “There are 10 things men should never do, and cheerleading is nine of them.”

The first time I read that line, did I agree with it? No.

Did I laugh at it? Yes.

Even though I didn’t agree with the words, I admired the man who wrote them and appreciated the thought that he put into developing and delivering them. In the introduction to his immortal routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” Carlin professed: “I love words. … They’re my work; they’re my play; they’re my passion. Words are all we have, really.”

That’s a sentiment that anyone who spends significant time shouting out words – whether in the context of a comedian’s rant or a cheerleader’s chant – can agree with.

Two: John E. (”Johnny”) Campbell

According to the published budget of the Rooters’ Club at the University of Minnesota, the Yell Master completed his preparations for the 1900 border battle against the University of Wisconsin by paying $2 to rent … a goat? Exactly what part it played in his sideline antics is lost to history, but his exertions in front of the grandstand as Minnesota eked out a 6-5 victory against Wisconsin are not. Immortalized in a cartoon on the front page of the paper on November 5, he is shown crouching – probably preparing to jump into the air. Body dressed in a sable suit, head covered by a black bowler, he brandishes a gold-headed cane with maroon and gold ribbons tied to the shaft. In the cartoon, the words of yells radiate out from his head, including those of our oldest college cheer:

Rah! Rah! Rah!

Ski-U-Mah!

Hoo Rah! Hoo Rah!

’Varsity! ’Varsity!

Minnesota!

His name? John E. Campbell. They say he invented cheerleading at the University of Minnesota in 1898. This is not entirely true.

The truth is that Campbell was not alone on that cold day in November of 1898. The “Pride of Minnesota” – not yet the Gophers, let alone the Golden Gophers – were in the midst of pioneering another school tradition, the three-game losing streak, and an unnamed editor of the weekly student newspaper, the Ariel, orchestrated a mass meeting to “organize the yelling forces” for the Northwestern game in an attempt to end that trend.

“The following,” the Ariel reported on November 12, “were nominated to lead the yelling today: Jack Campbell, F.G. Kotlaba, M.J. Luby, Albert Armstrong, of the Academics; [Price] Wickersham, of the Laws; and [Jennings] Litzenberg, of the Medics. These men should see to it that everybody leaves the park today breathless and voiceless – as this is the last game here, it ought to be a revelation to the people of Minneapolis in regard to University enthusiasm. The various sections should follow the lead of their captains with spirit, and in this way the game will be won, if systematic, energetic cheering and never-say-die encouragement and support can do it.”

Minnesota defeated Northwestern 17-6, and the Ariel declared the support of the students in the stands “worthy of [the team’s] splendid effort. The leaders of the cheering appointed at the mass meeting the day before did their duty, and the hundreds of students and supporters of the maroon and gold responded with a vim that made every street in Minneapolis echo with the ‘Ski-U-Mahs’ of victory.”

When the echoes finally faded into the winter winds whipping past their campus on the East Bank of the Mississippi River, however, the students of the University of Minnesota seemed to be unconvinced that designated yell leaders were necessary at all games.

The next time “yell captains” were selected was before a game against Ames College (now known as Iowa State University) in October of 1899. Wickersham had moved on to another position of campus prominence – manager of the football team – but Campbell and Luby returned to anchor a rooting team that also included students identified in the Ariel by only their last names: Beach, Force, Hayden, and Shepley. This spirit squad was the first to be presented with megaphones “to add to their lung power.” Minnesota won 6-0, and “did herself proud … in the display of enthusiasm. It has been a long time since Ski-U-Mah has been so much in evidence; and the results are plainly seen.”

Yet it wasn’t until the following fall, when Minnesota fielded a hefty team nicknamed the “Northern Giants” which won the school’s first conference championship, that a permanent team of yell leaders was selected by the student body.

Although they had decried “the lack of any systematic or organized yelling for the team on the part of the ’Varsity adherents” in editorial after editorial in The Minnesota Daily, Managing Editor S. DeWitt Adams and his associate editors apparently shared the distaste for actual cheerleading that another enthusiastic editor, Franklin D. Roosevelt of The Harvard Crimson, would discover during his short stint on the sidelines in 1903. Instead, they pushed for the founding of a formal Rooters’ Club to take on the oft-frustrating task against the hated University of Chicago. Led by legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, the Maroons had flattened the Gophers 29-0 on their way to capturing the Western Conference Championship the year before, and in the days leading up to the rematch the editorials in the Daily stridently argued that concerted cheering was the only way to ensure a better result in 1900.

On October 11, the editors presided over a mass meeting with the intent of organizing “a Rooters’ Club, to have charge of all the rooting this fall and be a permanent organization at the University.”

It is upon this signature innovation that the University of Minnesota’s true claim to the invention of modern cheerleading rests. Instead of intermittently assembling motley teams of yell leaders for big games, the U of M would institute a spirit squad whose work would “extend through the whole year and comprehend football, basketball, debate and oratory, and baseball.” It would “be composed of fellows who will pledge themselves to follow their leaders through thick and thin, through victory or defeat; who will yell when the last chance seems gone, who will never ‘knock,’ and who will uphold the University at all times and in every place.” And the leader those fine fellows would “pledge themselves to follow” was announced in the hyperventilating headline above a similarly breathless article that took up most of the space above the fold in the following day’s paper:

ENTHUSIASM IS RAMPANT

A Strong, Energetic Rooters’ Club Organized Yesterday.

Organized Rooting Assured.

John E. Campbell, President.

A Rooters’ Club at the University has long been desired; it is now a reality. The meeting of the students, called for the first hour yesterday, to take steps to organize such a club, was one of the best attended and most enthusiastic student gatherings ever assembled at the ’Varsity. Probably 800 students were present, and 800 students are now members of a Rooters’ Club. The membership will be increased to a thousand or more – men and women who will “root to the last ditch, who will never say die. …”

John E. Campbell, a most enthusiastic rooter for years past, was made president, and authorized to appoint committees on permanent organization, on the adoption of some emblem, and on the organization of a Megaphone Brigade, besides an Executive Committee. …

The Megaphone Brigade promises to be the most popular thing on the campus. One hundred and fifty fellows have joined already, and instruments were ordered by telegraph to supply its need. They will be on sale Friday or Saturday at the Book Store and Manager Wickersham will reserve the center section of the sun bleachers for the brigade if it is on the field at 2:30, the game beginning at 3:00 – and it will be there.

The Executive Committee will arrange for the yelling and yell masters, and report at a monster mass meeting to be held in Chapel, Friday, at the third hour. Other plans will be announced at the same time.

The Daily understands that a committee on yells has been appointed and that some new creations in vocal discord will be sprung on the Chicagoans Saturday. … The meeting was altogether a success and the yelling and rooting Saturday WILL BE RIGHT.

More importantly for pepster posterity, The Minnesota Daily also published “The Scheme for Yelling” devised by Campbell. The newly elected president of the Rooters’ Club divided the grandstand and the bleachers into 14 sections and assigned a yell captain to each one. The most coveted captaincy, that of the Megaphone Brigade, went to one Don Cameron. Coordinating the efforts of Cameron and the other captains were Yell Masters Campbell and Frank E. Force, each taking charge of one side of Northrop Field.

Under Campbell’s system, yells were to be started at the end sections and “taken up by each section in successive order.” At the signal of its yell master, one half of the football field was to yell in unison, followed immediately by the opposite side.

When Minnesota shocked the sports writers in attendance by playing the defending conference champs to a 6-6 tie, their articles attributed the team’s improved performance to Campbell’s systematic “Scheme for Yelling” – especially the Megaphone Brigade, which one reporter pronounced such “a marked success in the line of noisemaking … [it] could probably win the championship of the universe.”

The Daily promptly predicting that “never again will Minnesota students go back to the unorganized, disconnected yelling that has characterized their efforts previous to the good old year, 1900.”

So Johnny Campbell did, indeed, successfully systematize and organize cheerleading at the University of Minnesota. But not in 1898, and not without the help of a second yell master, 14 yell captains, and approximately 150 members of the Minnesota Megaphone Brigade.

Still, that’s more than enough to earn John E. Campbell the second of eight Ask A Male Cheerleader Two, Four, Six, Eight Who We Do Appreciate Awards.

Honorable Mention: Yell Master Frank E. Force

One: Thomas Peebles

As mentioned in Ask A Male Cheerleader #11, the oldest college cheer is the “Princeton Locomotive”:

Ray, Ray, Ray!
Tiger, Tiger, Tiger!
Sis, Sis, Sis,
Boom, Boom, Boom,
Aaaaaaaaaah!
Princeton, Princeton, Princeton!

Thomas Peebles did not write the Princeton Locomotive, which was actually adapted from a marching chant of the Seventh Regiment of New York City, which had passed through Princeton, New Jersey, on its way to Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. But he did bring it to the University of Minnesota. There, it’s skyrocket structure – the “Sis, Boom, Ahh” pattern intended to simulate, respectively, the launch of, explosion of, and reaction to a firework – inspired (or, more accurately, aggravated) the student athletes who created the U of M’s “Ski-U-Mah” in 1883.

That was the year the Princetonian Peebles brought the skyrocket and the sport of football – still a club sport barely removed from rugby – to “The U” as its new professor of mental and moral philosophy. Soon after he arrived, some of the football players heard about Peebles’ previous practice of the sport and asked him to help them prepare for an upcoming game against Carleton College. Peebles proved a hands-on coach, dividing the team into two squads that he pit against one another – leading one himself.

Needless to say, the coach’s squad usually won out, and whenever his boys would score a touchdown, Peebles would taunt the other side with a “Sis, Boom, Ahh! Princeton!”

To retaliate, teammates and roommates John W. Adams and “Win” Sargent decided to devise a yell with a distinctly Minnesotan flavor. (And, no, it wasn’t “Lutefisk, Lefse, Hotdish!”) Coupling ski-oo, a supposedly Sioux term to express exultation, with the nonsense syllable mah in order to create end rhymes with a rah and a ta, they came up with the earliest version of the cheer that the University of Minnesota’s legendary Yell Master Johnny Campbell would cajole the crowd into chanting when he first stepped onto the sidelines of Northrup Field:

Rah, Rah, Rah!
Ski-U-Mah!
Minn-so-ta!

According to the essay “Ski-U-Mah: Yells, Songs, and Cheers” in the History of Minnesota Football, Adams and Sargent promptly stumbled down the street to try it out. As it was quite late, their neighbors were not immediately won over by the new cheer. The first reaction to the now-famous “Ski-U-Mah” reportedly occurred when a frosted window slammed open and an irate voice invited the boys to “shut up and go to bed.”

And thus yet another proud tradition, the heckling of cheerleaders, also began at the good ol’ U of M – all because of Thomas Peebles, the first of eight recipients of the Ask A Male Cheerleader Two, Four, Six, Eight Who We Do Appreciate Award.

Dear Male Cheerleader:

What was the first National Football League team to have male cheerleaders?

C.C. Dallas

Dear C.C.:

Star-spangled hot pants, skintight and white. Blue blouses – crop tops, knotted just below the breasts.

But these uniforms are “revealing” in more than the obvious sense, as a single look at them should make it clear: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were the brainchildren of a man.

That man’s name? Tex Schramm. A Pro Football Hall of Famer, Schramm was hired away from CBS Sports in 1960 to be the first general manager of the Dallas Cowboys. One of the first to recognize that professional football had the potential to transcend the traditional definition of a sport and become a form of “sport entertainment,” Schramm suggested stationing stunning models along the stadium sidelines to attract the attention of television cameramen.

But, according to Go! Fight! Win! author Mary Ellen Hanson, the cheerleading coach Schramm had hired, Dee Brock, “argued that models who knew nothing about cheering ‘would never sustain fan interest.’ She lobbied instead for a coed group of 30 high school students. This squad of collegiate-style cheerleaders, named the ‘CowBelles and Beaux,’ served from the first Cowboys game in 1961 through 1971.”

During that final season, the CowBelles and Beaux helped cheer the team to a Super Bowl championship. When Cowboys fans returned to the stands of Texas Stadium the following fall, however, the Belles and Beaux had been replaced by a squad of seductive dancers whimsically called the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. This was, and is, a complete misnomer, as this spirit squad did not, and does not, lead cheers.

Cheers!

Chad

Dear Male Cheerleader:

Have any pro sports teams ever had male dancers?

Not-So-Tiny Dancer

Dear Not-So-Tiny:

Actually, the Ingots – the short-lived squad that cheered for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the early ’60s – danced in unison with their female counterparts, the Steelerettes.

But it isn’t the National Football League, but the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, where dancing dudes can currently be found. The 2003-2004 NBA season saw “the start of something big” – literally – at the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls. During a timeout in the second quarter of a November 7 home game against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Matadors rumbled onto the arena floor for the first time – showcasing what has become their signature style of heavyweight humor with a freestyle dance routine set to the tune of The Village People’s “YMCA.”

Described by the Bulls as “men with BIG energy, BIG enthusiasm, BIG pride for their favorite NBA team, and, well, BIG trousers,” the Matadors have physiques as outsize as their personalities. An ideal Matador, according to the team, “loves being the life of the party, proudly displays a wacky sense of humor, and rarely – if ever – visits the health club.”

Envisioned as comedic counterparts to the shapely Luvabulls, the Matadors are entering their fifth season of service at the United Center and inspiring similar dude dance lines such as the Detroit Pistons Spare Tires and the Florida Marlins Manatees.

Talk about becoming BIG successes.

Cheers!

Cheerleader Chad

Dear Male Cheerleader:

What’s a “Hotty Toddy,” again? I think a bartender recommended one of those when I was suffering from a head cold.

Thurston Forknowledge

Dear Thurston:

According to the Field Guide for Cocktails, a “hot toddy” consists of:

1½ oz. brandy

1 oz. honey

3 oz. hot water

½ lemon slice studded with two cloves

Stir it all together with a cinnamon stick, and, yes, you have an old-fashioned home remedy for stuffy sinuses and sore throats.

I have no idea, however, if former University of Mississippi cheerleader – and current U.S. Senator – Trent Lott has ever had one. What I was talking about was something that’s every bit as intoxicating to Ole Miss football fans: the “Hotty Toddy.”

(Who the hell is the second guy from the right? / Flim flam, bim bam, Trent Lott, by damn!) 

The “Hotty Toddy” very much falls into a category I call “nonsensical nascent yells.”

Are you ready?

Hell, yes!

Damn right!

Hotty Toddy, gosh almighty!

Who in the hell are we?

Hey!

Flim flam, bim bam,

Ole Miss, by damn!

And Lott isn’t the only one on Capitol Hill who knows those wacky words by heart. The senior Senator from Mississippi, Thad Cochran, also cheered during his undergrad days at Ole Miss – making the Magnolia State the only one in the nation to have both of its U.S. Senators be former college cheerleaders.

(Who the hell is this second guy from the right? / Flim flam, bim bam, Thad Cochran, by damn!)

Halfway to sharing that distinction is the Lone Star State, which has one spirit-squad Senator – Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who served as a cheerleader at the University of Texas.

Cheers!

Cheerleader Chad