FAFO. I can't say whether 10 weeks is appropriate, but I'm glad he gets some punishment. Still sad, the Ravens will miss him and it may hurt the lock he had on the HoF.
Baltimore Ravens rookie kicker Tyler Loop is officially the successor to Justin Tucker.
"He'll be the kicker," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said after Saturday night's 31-13 preseason win over the Cowboys in Dallas. "He's earned it."
Harbaugh's announcement came after an impressive performance by Loop. He made 5 of 6 field goals on Saturday, including ones from 51 and 53 yards.
When told that Harbaugh named him the Ravens' kicker, Loop told reporters in Dallas, "That's fun."
The Ravens selected Loop in the sixth round this year, making him the first kicker to be drafted in the franchise's 30-year history. Nine days later, Baltimore cut Tucker, who was being investigated by the NFL at that time for sexual misconduct. Tucker, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, has since received a 10-week suspension by the league for violating the personal conduct policy.
... He (Loop) is 6-of-8 in the preseason, missing from 46 and 50 yards....
A pair of men on the Minnesota Vikings cheerleading squad who have been deluged with often homophobic hate online from the right have come back with a tongue-in-cheek response to their critics.
“Wait…did someone say our name?” the Vikings’ Blaize Shiek posted on Instagram on Saturday, standing with cheer teammate Louie Conn.
The pair, whose season with the Vikings began in April, became the objects of a right-wing online pile-on last week, with conservative commentators and former athletes raging against the presence of male cheerleaders in the NFL.
“I’ve been a Vikings fan all my life… sigh,” actor Kevin Sorbo wrote on X last week in response to a video featuring the cheer team. “I need a new team now.”
Funny, I've NEVER been a Kevin Sorbo fan.
... About one-third of NFL clubs have male dancers on their cheer teams, a practice which began in the 2018 season, with the Los Angeles Rams.
In 2022, the Carolina Panthers became the first squad with an openly transgender cheerleader.
Male cheerleaders have long been part of the sport at the collegiate and high school level, and former Republican presidents George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower were once cheerleaders....
I don't get it. I've always watched them, often the bruisers who would lift and toss the girls. I think they are lucky.
... Appearing on OutKick's Hot Mic w/ Hutton & Withrow, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former college football head coach in his own right, railed against the Minnesota Vikings adding a pair of male cheerleaders to their squad. While not the first time male cheerleaders have appeared in the NFL, he called out the NFL for being "woke" and trying to take "take the masculinity out" of the sport.
"I would like to ask the ownership of the NFL and the commissioner, what the hell are you doing?" Tuberville began. "If you're going to be woke, and if you're going to try to take the men out of men's sports, which is what they're doing, they're trying to take gender and try and make it more about gender than about masculinity, then you're going to have a huge problem."
Insecure gibberish. It's Potatotown's masculinity that is so fragile.
The conversation goes off the rails a bit
Tuberville then railed against the state of Minnesota, socialism and gender identities before issuing a warning that male cheerleaders had better not become a thing in the South. He believes that adding just two male cheerleaders can become a slippery slope.
"You can see Minnesota doing it, they're one of the blue states, we've lost them, and they're more into socialism and it's about 150 genders. But at the end of the day, I hope to God it doesn't come South," he said.
"This is not about just a couple of people being men cheerleaders, it's about pushing a narrative about wanting to put gender into sports and let everyone know that we're going to take the masculinity out of it a little bit, and that's not going to happen in the South."
... As far as Tuberville's fear that male cheerleaders will become a thing in the South, that ship sailed ages ago.
These are ... photos shared on Instagram of the Auburn Tigers cheerleading team, the school that Tuberville previously coached from 1999 to 2008:
Link fixed.
