Within the foreseeable future teams without cheerleaders may find cheerleading becoming an expected part of any well presented sports package. Unwholesome snipes like in the July Compopolitan are now seen to be out of touch with the realities that sports fans see every week. The trend towards treating the subject seriously is accelerating and the Hollywood lampoon fictional image is gradually being replaced with realism and recognition that cheerleading is not a beauty pageant contest for camp-follower entertainers in sitcom parody. Cheerleaders are athletes, they work hard mastering many skills and have significant responsibility as Leaders, Role Models and Team Ambassadors. This is an athletic discipline just like gymnastics, and a sport in its own right with many major competitions all over the world.
Trends tend to be self reinforcing, which it why positive wholesome features act as lodestones.
Researchers will first look up everything previously published as a baseline. With more being printed about the skills and responsibilities involved the more new articles will be influenced towards the fitness and athletic aspects. With more high profile teams backing the benefits of cheerleading as part of their family entertainment package the activity becomes ever more self endorsing. It is a fact of life that the cheerleaders of high profile teams will naturally get more publicity. These teams have press offices that see cheerleaders as PR potential for promoting the team, and finding this works.