{"id":300871,"date":"2025-08-19T15:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/300871\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T15:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:07:10","slug":"minnesota-vikings-defend-male-cheerleaders-after-fan-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/300871\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Vikings defend male cheerleaders after fan backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/culture\/trending\/news\/minnesota-vikings-male-cheerleaders-backlash-response\/32e247904b962d63d4db52da?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=appeared_on\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Minnesota Vikings defend male cheerleaders after fan backlash;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Minnesota Vikings defend male cheerleaders after fan backlash<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=appeared_on\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:The Sporting News;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">The Sporting News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Minnesota Vikings have issued a response to fans who have threatened to boycott after the team announced that two male cheerleaders were been added to the squad this season.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The drama unfolded after the NFL team announced\u00a0that Blaize Shiek and Louie Conn, made the Viking&#8217;s 35-person cheer roster earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The next generation of cheer,&#8221; the Vikings wrote\u00a0on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DNJNyymxcDt\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Fans quickly took to the comments section to complain about the NFL team&#8217;s newest additions, with one fan writing, &#8220;I&#8217;m not a Viking fan no more.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Have the Minnesota Vikings lost their f-ing minds?! These are the two new cheerleaders. They took two jobs from women and put these two feminine men in their place. Somebody save us,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MikeCorso9\/status\/1955822174662746431\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:another person commented on X;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">another person commented on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would cancel my tickets. Cheerleading is simply a woman sport. Men don\u2019t need to be in everything. In 10 years men will be the only ones dancing in the field,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ReportzNFL\/status\/1957300751341846697\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:someone else said;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">someone else said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota Vikings respond to male cheerleader fan complaints<\/p>\n<p>Despite the backlash, the Vikings are standing by their decision to add Shiek and Conn to the team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While many fans may be seeing male cheerleaders for the first time at Vikings games, male cheerleaders have been part of previous Vikings teams and have long been associated with collegiate and professional cheerleading,&#8221; the team said in a statement,&#8221; according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wxztOLNyLfI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:&quot;NBC News.&quot;;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">&#8220;NBC News.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>According to the outlet, no fans have cancelled their season tickets thus far.<\/p>\n<p>One of the two male cheerleaders, Shiek, has also issued a response to the critics.<\/p>\n<p>On August 16, Shiek shared a photo of himself and Conn donning Vikings gear and pom poms on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DNa2TEttF-W\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;ig_rid=79b38f92-8d21-4169-ad7a-dd57d2dd69f7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He captioned the post, &#8220;Wait\u2026did someone say our name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MORE LIFESTYLE NEWS:<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota Vikings defend male cheerleaders after fan backlash originally appeared on The Sporting News The Minnesota Vikings have&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[8929,7,54381,233,259,2529,6,57073,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-300871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-cheerleaders","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-louie-conn","11":"tag-minnesota","12":"tag-minnesota-vikings","13":"tag-minnesotavikings","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-viking","16":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}