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Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, weighed in on the conversation around the Minnesota Vikings male cheerleaders.
The Vikings’ squad was the topic of conversation since the start of the preseason. Blaize Shiek and Louie Conn drew the ire of NFL fans on social media.
Tuberville appeared on OutKick’s “Hot Mic” on Tuesday and put the NFL on notice.
“I would like to ask the ownership of the NFL and the commissioner, what the hell are you doing?” he said. “You’ve got the No. 1 sport on planet Earth in terms of people watching it. Your business is growing, it’s getting better and better. There’s some ways you’ve tried to attack it over the last 10-15 years but you’ve been able to withstand that.
“But if you’re going to be woke and you’re gonna try to take the men out of men’s sports, which is what you’re doing. They’re trying to take gender and say, ‘OK, we’re going to make it more about gender than we are about masculinity.’ Then, you’re going to have a huge problem. It’s coming.”
Tuberville warned that fans may stop buying tickets to games if male cheerleaders become more prevalent.
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“You can see Minnesota doing it. They’re one of the blue states. We’ve lost them. They’re more about socialism and all the things that go on with that and it’s about 150 genders. At the end of the day, I hope to God it doesn’t come south to Atlanta or to Texas or to Dallas or to some of our NFL teams because you’ll lose it,” he said.
“People will actually quit buying tickets because this is the narrative they’re trying to push. This is not just about a couple of people being men cheerleaders. It is about pushing a narrative that you want to put gender into sports and let everyone know we’re trying to show, ‘Hey, we’re going to take the masculinity out of it a little bit.’ And that’s not going to happen in the south.”
The Vikings put out a statement in defense of Shiek and Conn last week.
“Male cheerleaders have been part of previous Vikings teams and have long been associated with collegiate and professional cheerleading,” the team told NBC News. “We support all our cheerleaders and are proud of the role they play as ambassadors of the organization.”
Shiek and Conn are both in their first seasons as Vikings cheerleaders.
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