Henrietta Hay's Column

The mornings are cool, it gets dark earlier in the evening, and the leaves are starting to fall, but the real sign of autumn is the sight of footballs sailing through the air. As a Sunday afternoon couch potato I had expected this year to watch the Broncos show that their problem had been Dan Reeves all the time. Instead, it turns out that they need something besides a new coach - women. The Broncos are going to have cheerleaders again. La de dah! The Broncoettes or Fillies, or something.

Now before you start writing to the editor or me or anybody else, let me say that I think women are great and that dancing, one of the oldest of the art forms, is a joy to watch. The finest athletes in the world are ballet dancers. It's just that I think that pro football and dancing girls are mutually incompatible.

As I write, there has not been a home game yet, so I don't know whether the cheerleaders will replace the white horse that galloped up and down the field after each touchdown or whether they will all gallop together. And I don't know whether they will start or stop the "wave." Cheerleaders they are not, but they will be there dancing through rain and snow and the cold days when their legs turn blue.

Ordinarily I find macho, chest pounding males a little hard to take, but I do get a kick out of watching them in pro football. All that pent-up aggression comes out on the playing field, as those huge virile males bash each other to the sound of clashing helmets, not unlike the Roman gladiators of old. The players are fine athletes, but they are also putting on a great and expensive show. In fact, the only time I can relax and enjoy sexism with a clear conscience is when I'm watching them. The Bronco games provide the best show in town on Sunday afternoons.

So why, with all that testosterone on the field, do they have to add a chorus line? The reason, of course, is no secret. The good old boys who run things over there think that the game of football is not enough. A Bronco spokesman says that modern audiences expect sophisticated, multi-media entertainment (read that beautiful girls) and that Broncos owner Pat Bowlen decided this year that a dance line would "improve the product." Gee whiz, all this time I thought it was a game, professional and highly commercialized, but still a game.

This is not a Gallup poll, but I asked several Bronco fans, mostly men, here in Happy Valley whether they liked the idea of dancers on the sidelines at Bronco games. Most of them replied with some version of, "Hell no." There is a distinct possibility that they said that to avoid a feminist lecture from me, but some of men really think it is purely extraneous to what is purely a male game.

The women generally think that it is a retreat to pre-feminist days, that it is demeaning to all of us and especially to those very talented young women who are out there in all kinds of weather, not to lead cheers but merely to "improve the product."

I hoped we had moved beyond using women in short skirts to lure customers. As Mary Winter in the Rocky Mountain News said, it's "...a blast from the past, when women were a bit lower on the food chain than I like to think they are today. To me football cheerleaders stand for all the things women shouldn't be prized for."

Sad to say, the whole idea of females putting on abbreviated costumes to cheer on the male athletes has been with us in one form or another for centuries, which hasn't done much for women's self esteem. Today it is wonderful to see many more girls who are on the playing fields instead of the sidelines.

If we must have "cheerleading," in High School and college, let's recognize it as a separate sport and get them off the sidelines. These kids are great dancers and gymnasts.

I wish the Bronco Cheerleaders well and hope they all have successful careers as dancers or whatever they choose. But on Sunday afternoons I'd rather watch the guys with a clear conscience.