Some football fans are flipping out over cheerleaders.
The Minnesota Vikings received an onslaught of backlash on social media after it hired two male cheerleaders, Louie Conn and Blaize Shiek.
Earlier this month, the NFL team softly announced on Instagram that its cheer squad had a few new additions.
“The next generation of cheer has arrived!” a caption read alongside a video that prominently featured Conn doing a backflip.
Numerous fans immediately called foul on the team’s decision to hire two men who appear to be highly qualified for the job.
“I just lost all of my respect for the Vikings,” one Instagram user said in response to the team’s post that included Conn.
“I’m not a Viking fan no more,” another echoed.
“Just trying to piss off fans with this one huh?” another user complained.
The Vikings’ post isn’t the only one getting heat. A TikTok video of Shiek dancing with a female colleague has been making the rounds on Elon Musk’s now highly conservative platform, X. Amid the countless homophobic comments aimed at Shiek on X, one user plainly stated: “I don’t have a problem with male cheerleaders, but I do have a problem with male cheerleaders acting like women.”
Yet it seems that the Vikings are standing firm in their decision to hire Conn and Shiek.
“Male cheerleaders have been part of previous Vikings teams and have long been associated with collegiate and professional cheerleading,” the team said in a statement to NBC News last week. “We support all of our cheerleaders and are proud of the role they play as ambassadors of the organization.”
The team told NBC that no fans have canceled their season tickets because of the decision.
Brooks Kraft via Getty Images
And since the backlash seems to be coming from more conservative corners of the internet, it should also be noted that former Republican presidents George W. Bush, Ronald Regan and Dwight Eisenhower were also cheerleaders in their youth.
Conn and Shiek have responded to the hullabaloo on social media as well.
Conn simply pinned a selfie of himself and Shiek decked out in their Viking uniforms to his Instagram account.
The caption reads: “wait…did someone say our name?”
Shiek pinned the same post to his Instagram account, but has upped the ante a bit more than Conn.
On Monday, Shiek posted an Instagram story that shows musician Lizzo singing the lyric, “New man on the Minnesota Vikings” from her 2019 hit, “Truth Hurts” on one side, and on the other, Conn and Shiek shaking their pompoms alongside two female cheerleaders.
Screenshot @blaize_shiek via Instagram
Shiek published another TikTok over the weekend that features him and Conn acting goofy as audio of Nicki Minaj saying, “Um, if you don’t like me, that’s fine. But, you know, watch your mouth,” plays in the background.
