Cheerleading has become completely incidental to the sports they were originally intended to support. If fact, it's mostly just an excuse for female daredevils to risk their necks for thrills and chills. It's by far the most dangerous sport for young women—even though the NCAA doesn't consider it a sport—so the Wall Street Journal wants to know what is the point of risking all these lives. (Dorks.)

Keep in mind—we're not talking about NFL cheerleaders, who are merely eye candy for the first 10 rows. What they do is unique and special, of course, but choreographed rumpshaking rarely breaks bones. We're talking about high school and college cheerleaders who continually up the ante on flips, dips and human stacking. It's crazy, irrelevant to the outcome of football and basketball games, yet somehow is absolutely necessary. No really cares about what cheerleaders are doing, but if you went to a college football game that didn't have them, wouldn't that be weird? Maybe you would forget to cheer. Then your team would lose. And it would be your fault.

So to answer your questions: Yes, there is no point. Just like every other sport.

What's the Point of Cheerleading? [WSJ]

Dr Frederick Mueller, a sports injury expert at the University of North Carolina, who did the research, told The Sunday Telegraph: "We are getting more and more of these cheerleading injuries, and they are pretty serious head and neck injuries. They're throwing people in the air 20 to 25 feet and trying to catch them on the way down. It's really gymnastic activity. It shouldn't be called cheerleading any more.

Of course both football and cheerleading injuries could be cut down dramatically if they would just eliminate those banners.

Cheerleaders Are Risking Serious Injury And Death To Support Their Teams [Telegraph.co.uk]

(We're kidding.)

Unfortunately, her disguise started unraveling around the time that her check for the cheerleader's uniform bounced higher than she could. Still, she pulled it off for some time. How did she do it?

A high school employee, Kim Demeny, told authorities that the woman, posing as the teen, seemed very timid. Demeny said she told her she was not good at math and even cried when she talked about moving from Pahrump Valley High School in Nevada. Demeny said she looked older than a student but had the demeanor of a high school girl.

So she kept up the disguise of being a teenager by, in fact, never having stopped being one. Now you know why her daughter lives in Nevada.

By the way, we fully expect criminal action will not be the only reason she has to appear in court. She can also expect Rupert Murdoch's lawyers to be so far up her ass for stealing the plot of an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" that she'll be AJ'ing platinum blonde correspondents for months.

Mom allegedly uses daughter's ID to be cheerleader [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]