The History of Cheerleading and Football

By 4Football Staff · October 30, 2026 · 10 min read

Cheerleading began as men leading college crowds in organized yells. Here is how it grew into a gymnastics-based sport, a pro-game fixture and a safety-conscious activity.

Picture a Friday night football game: a band in the stands, a student section on its feet, and along the sideline a squad in matching uniforms leading the crowd in a chant. Now picture the same scene at a college game, or at an NFL stadium, or on a television broadcast. Cheerleading seems as permanent a part of football as the goalposts.

It was not always so, and the surprising part is how it began. Cheerleading started as a male activity in the late nineteenth century, grew into a mostly female one in the twentieth, absorbed gymnastics and dance, became a competitive sport with its own championships, and ended up raising real questions about safety, pay and whether it counts as a sport at all. This article follows that story from the first organized crowd yells to the present. It is a history of the activity and its link to football, not a guide to joining a squad; if you are looking for the high school version, the article on marching bands, cheer and dance teams at high school games covers game-night life in detail.

Before Cheerleaders: Crowds That Yelled

Spectators have cheered at sporting events for as long as there have been sporting events. What the colleges added in the nineteenth century was organization. In the 1860s and 1870s, students at several Eastern colleges developed chants and yells that identified their school, and they used them at football games. A yell was short and rhythmic, often built around the school's name or a nonsense syllable, and it was meant to be shouted by hundreds of people at once.

Princeton is the school most often credited with the first organized, student-led cheering at football games, and a Princeton graduate is usually credited with bringing the practice to the University of Minnesota in the 1880s. The details of who did what and when are told differently in different accounts, so treat the specifics with caution. The main point is not in dispute: by the end of the century, cheering at football games had gone from an unplanned roar to something with leaders.

The First Cheerleader

The best-known origin story comes from Minnesota in 1898. According to the version that is widely told, a student named Johnny Campbell stood in front of the crowd at a football game and led them in a chant, and that moment is often marked as the birth of cheerleading as we know it. Whether or not he was literally the first, the story captures how the practice began. A student with a loud voice and a sense of timing stepped out in front of the crowd and told it when to shout.

Early cheerleaders were men. Cheerleading was seen as a leadership role, a way to show school spirit, and it was taken seriously on campus. The title "yell leader" was common, and the megaphone became the tool of the trade. Some universities have kept the tradition: Texas A&M still has student yell leaders elected by their classmates, a link to the older form of the activity.

Women Join the Squads

The change came gradually in the 1920s. As more women enrolled at colleges, some joined the squads, and by the middle of the 1920s women were cheering at several schools. The Second World War accelerated the shift. With many young men serving in the military, women stepped into the role at schools across the country, and when the men returned, the activity had changed. By the postwar decades, cheerleading was widely seen as a female pursuit, though men remained involved, particularly in stunting and tumbling.

This shift affected the look of the activity. Uniforms changed, routines became more varied, and the focus moved from a single leader with a megaphone to a group performing together. At many schools, being a cheerleader became a position of status, a way to be visible at the biggest event of the week.

From Yelling to Gymnastics

The next big change came in the middle of the twentieth century and is associated with a man who became a pioneer in the field. Lawrence Herkimer, a former college cheerleader, organized a cheerleading camp in the late 1940s and founded the National Cheerleaders Association. He is credited with popularizing pom-poms, which he developed from strips of material, and with teaching a signature jump that now carries his nickname, the Herkie. His company also made cheerleading uniforms and equipment, which helped standardize the look.

The camps mattered as much as the products. Before them, each squad had developed its routines on its own. At camps, young cheerleaders learned techniques from instructors and brought them home. The result was a sharp rise in the level of skill. Tumbling, jumps and, later, partner stunts and pyramids became a normal part of the activity. By the 1970s a second organization, founded by a former college cheerleader in 1974, was also running camps and popularizing new stunt techniques.

What the camps changed

• Skill spread quickly. A technique invented at one school could be taught to hundreds of squads in a single summer.
• Standards rose. Cheerleaders began to practice year-round, and tryouts became more competitive.
• A business grew. Uniforms, camps and competitions turned the activity into an industry.

Cheerleaders at the Professional Game

College and high school cheerleaders were a regular part of football for decades before the pros adopted the idea. The NFL's first cheerleaders are usually traced to the 1950s, when the Baltimore Colts used a squad. For many years, though, professional cheer teams were small and local.

Then came a change in style. In the early 1970s the Dallas Cowboys introduced a squad that combined dance, a distinctive uniform and a national profile. The squad gained wide public attention in the middle of the decade, aided by television coverage of the league's championship game, and other teams followed with their own dance-oriented squads. The professional model was different from the college one: less gymnastics, more choreography, and a squad of adults who often had other jobs.

Pay and working conditions

The pro cheerleading model has also drawn criticism. In the 2010s, lawsuits and public reports focused on how some cheerleaders were paid and treated, including the hours they worked and the rules they had to follow. Some teams changed their practices in response. Pay, rules and employment status vary from team to team and have changed over the years, so this article does not describe the current arrangements; they are a matter for each team and for the law of the state it plays in.

Men, who started cheerleading, have also returned to professional squads in recent years. The pro game is one place where the old male tradition and the later female one meet.

A Sport of Its Own

Cheerleading in the stands is only part of the story. By the late 1970s, cheerleading competitions were being held and televised, and the activity developed a second life as a competitive sport with its own rules, scoring and national championships. Competitive teams may never lead a crowd in a chant at a football game; they perform timed routines that are judged on difficulty and execution, and many train in gyms that have no connection to a school.

This split created a debate that is still going on. Is cheerleading a sport? For some purposes, the question has been argued in court. In 2010, a federal court ruled that competitive cheer as it was then organized at one university did not meet the standard of a varsity sport for the purposes of the federal law on gender equity in athletics. Since then the activity's governing bodies and supporters have worked to establish clearer rules and to gain recognition, and the question may be answered differently by different organizations. The answer is outside the scope of this history, but the debate shows how far the activity has traveled from a student with a megaphone.

Safety: The Cost of Getting Better

As stunts grew taller and tumbling got harder, injuries became a concern. Injury researchers have repeatedly noted that cheerleading accounts for a large share of the serious injuries among female high school athletes, even though the activity has fewer participants than many other sports. Falls from stunts and pyramids are the leading cause.

The activity responded with safety measures that mirror the story of football in some ways.

1. Coach education. An association of cheerleading coaches and administrators, formed in the late 1980s, developed safety guidelines and training for coaches.
2. Rule limits. Many states and associations restrict how high a stunt can go, require trained spotters, and ban certain moves for younger or less-experienced squads.
3. Surface and supervision rules. Rules often specify practice surfaces and require that a qualified adult supervise stunt practice.
4. Medical protocols. Concussion and return-to-play rules that apply to football also apply to cheerleaders in most places.

Specific rules vary by state and by level, so a squad member or parent should check the state high school association or the college's own policy. For general education only: any injury concern belongs with a doctor or athletic trainer.

What Cheerleaders Do on Game Day

For a fan watching a football game, the role of the squad has a practical side that is easy to overlook.

• Leading the crowd. Chants, signs and call-and-response cheers help build the atmosphere, especially when the home team needs a boost.
• Pregame and halftime performances. Many squads perform alongside the band, dance team and mascot.
• Community work. Squads often appear at school events, charity drives and parades.
• Sideline presence. Squads keep out of the way of the action but must pay attention to the game, because players and officials sometimes run out of bounds near them.

For the larger set of traditions, including the band and the mascot, see college football traditions: bands, mascots and pregame rituals. You can find high school teams in the high school section, college programs in the college section and professional teams on the teams page.

The Vocabulary of a Modern Squad

Modern cheerleading has its own vocabulary, and knowing a few terms makes the history easier to follow.

• Base. A cheerleader who supports and lifts another from below.
• Flyer. The cheerleader who is lifted or thrown into the air during a stunt.
• Spotter. A person positioned to catch or steady a stunt, typically behind the flyer. Spotters are a key part of the safety rules described above.
• Stunt group. The team of bases, flyer and spotter who perform a single stunt together.
• Tumbling. Gymnastics-style moves such as handsprings and flips, performed on the ground.
• Pyramid. A formation in which several stunt groups connect to form a larger structure.
• Basket toss. A move in which bases launch a flyer into the air and catch her.

Cheer, dance and pom are three distinct activities, and they are often confused. Cheer emphasizes chants, stunts and tumbling. Dance teams emphasize choreography and technique across styles such as jazz and hip-hop. Pom, or pom-pom, routines focus on sharp, synchronized arm movements. A single school might field all three, and each has its own competitions.

How Squads Differ by Level

The roles are not fixed, and individual schools and teams arrange them differently. Alongside the squad, the band and the traditions covered in fight songs and alma maters: the music of Saturday make up the sound and look of the game.

Why the Tradition Lasted

Football and cheerleading grew up together for a simple reason: football games are long, with a lot of stopped time, and a crowd needs something to do. A chant fills a timeout and a halftime show fills the break. Cheerleaders gave the crowd a script, and the script helped build the weekly ritual that makes a game more than a contest.

The tradition also lasted because it adapted. It began with men and megaphones, moved to women and pom-poms, picked up gymnastics, formed a sport of its own, and kept finding a place on the sideline. Whether you see cheerleading as a symbol of school spirit, a demanding athletic activity or both, its history is tied to the history of the game it was invented to support.

A Timeline

These dates are widely cited but not all are precisely documented, so use them as a rough guide.

The Short Version

• Cheerleading began as men leading college crowds in organized yells; a Minnesota game in 1898 is a famous early example.
• Women joined squads in the 1920s and became the majority after the Second World War.
• Camps, pom-poms and equipment companies in the middle of the century helped turn it into a skilled activity.
• Professional teams adopted cheer and dance squads, with a style that emphasized dance and a national profile.
• Competitive cheerleading became a sport with its own championships, and whether it counts as a varsity sport for federal gender-equity purposes has been argued in court.
• Safety rules grew as stunts got taller; they vary by state and level.