Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Cheerlead & Tell with Domonique Foxworth and Jessica Smetana

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Are the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders actually what they say they are? (And are they underpaid?) Also, how does a retired NFL player coach his own children without turning into Earl Woods? Plus: a fire alarm, a milking, a moonlighting meteorologist, a hard-to-get kung-fu master and the Hug-a-Bros. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. The lesson that we learned this past season is that Coach Foxworth got a lemon booty. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. I took an athlete, a bunch of athlete classes when I was in college. What is an athlete class at Harvard? Positive psychology.

What's a Harvard? God damn it. Mother of The mic's not picking it up Are you sure? It probably is This happens once a week Yeah I mean it happened twice today

I want to explain to the microphone What I was just told here in Miami Which is that the fire alarm will be tested Throughout the next 90 minutes But Yeah Mikes are definitely picking it up Yeah they're picking that up

So we're in Miami Oh Safe I think we're good All right I think we're good We can resume milking Dominique's body.

Oh, man. Anytime I come down here, man. I feel like one of those industrial cows where you have the machine that's hooked up to all the udders. Like hoses. Yeah, just...

You like that? nasty noise. I'm a nasty boy. Just pump me. Dominique. That was actually worse. Dominique, we have company today. Hello, Jessica.

Hello, Dominique. I think this is my first time on your show? Yeah. Unless somebody else has been impersonating me and you've been doing other episodes with a guy who is clearly not as good at Segways as me. Just save us, please. I brought the Dallas Cowboys Chewleders Netflix show, which I binge watched last week,

and I have so many feelings about and just contradictory thoughts and emotions. But have you guys seen this show on Netflix? I watched episode one. Yes, we did our homework. Nice. I found it gripping. in ways that I don't want to step on

your executive summary here but there are some parts of it where I was like, oh, this is how this shit works. It's a lot of pressure every single night. Our job is to make it look easy. Since I was little.

Dallas Cowellers, that's what I want to do. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like my general feeling is that I really enjoyed the show and I would recommend it. It was very entertaining. It's a well-made docu-series. You get to follow along.

these women as they auditioned to be on the team. It kind of is a more glossy Netflix version of the show making the team, which followed the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders for years and how they auditioned and all the things that go into it. But this one kind of goes into the season and you see a lot of stuff behind the scenes and it really weaves, I think, a well-made narrative about specific dancers and the people that make the team. And so you sort of get emotionally invested in them in their well-being. But like you said, Pablo, there's so much that goes into it that feels just icky. And I think the Netflix show does a good job of kind of letting you sit with that and not tell you if you should feel a certain way about it. So I think it did kind of

challenge me in that sense. What did you know, Dominique, as an NFL player, about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders as this institution? I mean, I'm aware the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are American sweetheart. Like, I'm aware of it. Just like the brand. Yeah, I know. Like, I'm aware of this. Like, I'm aware that it was a thing. I'm aware that they are a separate entity that people actually get excited about and look forward to. Some of the things brought back memories for me from when I was a player was that whole big audition. I played for the Broncos, which I don't know the ranking in their cheerleaders, but it was a big deal. Denver's like the only major city and a real large area. So

women came from far and wide to audition to be on the Broncos. And when they were doing like the audition scenes, I was called in to be one of the guests for grading the You were one of the judges? Wow. So this part of the Netflix show, Jess, was one of my, I mean, favorite parts. I try to have the most diverse panel of judges that can help us seek out the best teammates that we can with this job that is so much more than a dance solo. We have judges that are members of our local media. Scott is a shit singer.

I am. The people in episode one of the Cowboys series, to get a sense of who Dominique's counterparts were for this season of this show, it was a stylist for a salon. The stylist who then goes on to be the person that does the makeovers. There's like a makeover episode. This show had a lot of shades of America's Next Top Model,

which I'm not sure of either of you watched, but that show was seminal in women my age, developing eating disorders in the 2000s. It was the local meteorologist. Yeah. A cooking influencer was also there. Yes. And he was like, your toes not pointed.

Like my favorite is the meteorologist being like, I don't know about that kick. And I'm like, what? Yeah. At one point, I don't know what Dominique was like as a judge of the feedback, but the meteorologist was like, she was just being outdanced to me. Number 36, Charlie. And the feel, I'm like, wow, looks amazing. And then she started kicking.

Well, I don't think we should lower our bar for anybody. I'm like, where the fuck does this guy? Stick to weather fronts, buddy. Yeah. My role was early in the process, so there was like the first thing. It's a big room in the stadium. And I will have you know that I think

the Denver Broncos cheerleaders, I mean, they should be at least second best. They're up there, like, as far as cheerleaders are concerned. Yeah, but... The talent level is insane. Yes. Incredible talent level with the women who are like classically trained some of them.

I don't remember exactly. I just kind of was like doing the numbers and stuff. You're doing cheerleader analytics. Yeah. I just met like number gradings. Like I don't remember exactly how involved I was. But like I was 22, maybe 23. I was not there to judge.

I was there to make friends. And as someone who in college I dated a, cheerleader or two? Real cheerleaders don't really respect the idea that the Dallas Cowboys consider themselves cheerleaders. So in the NFL, there are, I think the Ravens have an actual cheer squad

that does stunts, like throw people up. This is a whole thing. I was texting one of my friends about this who's a college cheerleader. And, yes, like, there's dance, there's cheer. There's cheer has more stunting and tumbling and stuff like that. But, yeah, I mean...

These are dance teams. This is like a dance team cheer hybrid, I guess. That call themselves cheerleaders. So there are, there's like a stolen valor dynamic. There is. With the most famous cheer squad in American history. I should say, like, I don't come from a cheer world. So if you get pissed at me for getting something wrong, sincerely, I am sorry.

Because I do admire the skill level that goes into this. And I think that leads to probably one of my biggest, like, issues, I guess, with the entire thing is that, like, A, I think the biggest storyline to come out of all this is, like, They're not paid well, right? It was, dude, one of the cheerleaders who's auditioning says, or who made it, was like, I get paid like a substitute teacher, no way, like a full-time chick-fil-A employee. How much are you making as a Dallas-Coblished cheerleader? I would say I'm making, like, a substitute teacher. I would say I'm making like a chick-fil-a-worker that works full-time.

Well, let's listen to Charlotte Jones talk about the pay issue. There's a lot of cynicism around pay for NFL cheerleaders, and as it should be, they're not paid a lot. But the facts are is that they actually don't come here for the money. They come here for something that's actually bigger than that to them. They have a passion for dance. There are not a lot of opportunities in the field of dance to get to perform. at an elite level.

It is about being a part of something bigger than themselves. It is about a sisterhood that they were able to form, about relationships that they have for the rest of their life. They have a chance to feel like they're valued, that they're special, and that they are making a difference. When the women come here, they find their passion, and they find their purpose. So she's saying they come here not for money,

but for the opportunity, which is obviously, she's the daughter of a billionaire who owns the most highly valued team of probably any sport in the world. I think the cowboys are probably worth the most amount of money. I would assume. I also assume. I think they were recently valued at like $9 billion. And I think I know that because I had to write about it for Stugats' book.

So I guess thank you. Speaking of unpaid labor. But yeah, I mean, these women, like, these women, like they are auditioning. for this team and they're constantly being judged and assessed and critiqued and criticized by the women who are in charge of the Dallas Cowboys trailers. Kelly and Judy, they're kind of the two main people. And then there's, of course, this other layer on top of that, which is the Jones family and like the sort of executive leadership of the Cowboys. So they're all kind of working in this in this power structure, this hierarchy within the Dallas Cowboys. And so on the one hand, you have these women that go

through this extremely grueling process together and they feel the sense of like camaraderie and teamwork and like passion. And so you see in one episode they bring back the alumni cheerleaders and they all dance together. And like you do get the sense that they're getting a positive feeling out of doing all of this. And it's not for nothing. Like they want to do this. This is like their life's dream in many cases and a feeling of accomplishment in the world of dance and cheer that like many people would really kill for. The flip side of that is that, like, they're not paid well. They're objectified. There's a episode where a woman actually says that she's groped by someone at a cowboy's game. One of the cheerleaders is groped by a photographer. They're just hypersexualized.

It's just so, like, there's so many parts of it. The being beholden to the beauty standard, I think, in particular is something that this show really shows you. Like, they're constantly talking about what these women look like, whether it's the hair, they're zooming in on HD photos and saying, like, fix your mascara. The cooking influencer at one point, as a judge, says, quote, there's a little more weight in her face. Right. And, like, there's...

I get, I get, on some level, right? Like, that's what you sign up for is, like, but, but the whole notion of, like, here's this institution. Right. And I'm an outsider, I mean, obviously, I'm like, I went to a high school without a football team in New York City. So, like, all of this is from, like, movies and television. The idea that all of these people are both, like, some of the most famous entities in the sports imagination of America and are also, like, clearly in need of Dominique Foxworth's equivalent to unionize them.

Yeah, right. And, like, to go on top of that, like, one of the other things that you are introduced to is a woman who was formerly on the team has since retired and has had to get multiple surgeries because of cheer-related injuries. Like the things that they're doing are physically difficult. There's a whole storyline about the, they do a kick into a split. In the Thunderstruck Dallas Cowboys routine, this is the big routine that they do in every game. They go into a kick line and they kick to every time you hear the symbol crash

at the end of Thunderstruck. And then they kick up and land in a split on the turf. And it looks so painful. And they tell you how painful it is. And they're all like connected to one another, literally like holding on to each other. So if one person screws up this thing, the split, it can actually, like, screw up everyone else around you and potentially get you hurt. So, like, there's, like, a degree of difficulty here that 99.999% of people could not do, like, physically.

And yet Charlotte Jones is, like, telling us, well, they're just here for, you know, things other than money. They're just here for the opportunity. And so, like, a lot of it just feels like such a big contradiction. Yeah, this level of discussion does not happen in episode one of this show, for the record. Well, I think it's like I really like the women in the show. Like, I'm rooting for them and I totally like, I want them to succeed and I want to watch them dance. Like, it's mesmerizing to watch them dance. So who is made to feel like they are getting a bad deal in all of this, right?

So you could argue that it's the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders who are super famous but wildly underpaid. You could argue that it's the actual, quote unquote, cheerleaders who themselves are saying, these aren't cheerleaders. And those cheerleaders, according to this article that I found from CBS News 2012, US Appeals Court, colon, cheerleading not a sport, has itself been used to both like help allegedly try to eliminate other female sports. Like this was, can we eliminate women's volleyball, for instance, but keep competitive cheering. And the whole ruling was cheerleading competitively not a sport. Of course, the volleyball players are like, what the fuck you're trying to do to us? And so everybody feels like it's being, it's something to be used for someone else's ends. Yeah, you can't take the, like, the individual out of the context, right?

Like, you can't take, like, the individual person who's doing this and wants to do this out of the context of the Dallas Cowboys and of the NFL. They have so much money. They are historically, predominantly male and four men have largely ignored their, female fan base for decades, I would say. Oh, no, we got them pink jerseys. We got them pink jerseys. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shrink it and pink it.

Um, but I think that, like, just on, like, a basic level, I think that it's very obvious to understand why a woman putting on this Dallas Cowboys cheerleader uniform feels empowered and, like, strong. Totally. And they've accomplished their dream. And at the same time, understand that, like, the beauty standard and the power structure in play has been historically used to a problem. women. Yeah, I think it's safe to say that every woman's dream in America is to be told that they have

outdance someone else by a local meteorologist. That is one of the best parts of the show. You're so sassy. Like, who is this guy? Where does he get off doing this? Dominique. Sure. So, it's interesting because I have three children and I'm a dad. I coach my son's flag football team. I also have been helping my oldest daughter and her track exploits and my youngest daughter might be the most athletic of all of them like relative to her peers no dog no desire to play sports no desire to play sports and she does karate and she likes that she loves to dance and has asked me if she could be a cheerleader and I have to be honest with you, I will bring myself around to allowing her to do it at some point. But my initial reaction, even like I dated cheerleaders in college and an NFL,

and like some of my best friends are cheerleaders. But I still have a hard time where it's like I get that you have competition. But I have a hard time with the idea of like, why you want to cheer for the touchdown? go score them. I put her in flag football. Faster than all the girls. Hated it. Put her in soccer and she'd go score a goal

and then lay down and cry. It's like, what are you doing? And then our older sister was like always the best player on all of her soccer teams. Always the best player on basketball teams. And now we're going to Greensboro because she qualified for the junior Olympics. It's all my son.

That's a big deal. It's our first year. I mean... That's pretty cool. Well, yeah, she's... Doing pretty well. We were training in the sand yesterday. She asked me to help her train.

Oh, here, here. Yeah, and Miami. And I was like, sure. She said, can you come up with some exercise for me? I did it. And midway through, she was like, can you not come up with any exercise? I was like, all right, you don't want to be great. You don't be great.

Her calves are burning. Let's go have a good time, man. Wait, do you find yourself, Dominique? Are you Earl Woods? No. Are you Richard Williams? So I decided that I would never be that because I did not experience that. And obviously, it worked out for me athletically.

And I think that there are a couple other paths you could go down as like, if my dad, who wasn't really a good athlete, he said he played JV football in high school and that was it. But if he, like, completely dedicated himself to making me the best possible player I could be, then maybe I could have been better or maybe I could have, like, revolted against this. So my desire as a parent was always to, like, downplay. And it's funny, especially at these flag football games, where, My son's been playing for a while. I've only coached the last two years, which has been three seasons. And watching how other parents react, I always just like, you obviously were a good high school football player,

but that's where your career stopped because you are too, far too invested in these kids. And I never wanted to be that guy. So when things go wrong for my kids in sports, they come off, I'm like, I'm good. When things go well, I'm like, great job. And I try to do the things that you're like to celebrate, the effort and the sportsmanship and that sort of thing is like

you gave up that touchdown but you know what I was really impressed with you came back and whatever and your teammate missed the flag and you know what I was impressed with that you were the first one over there to pat him on the back and I think back to my dad again it's like when I was six

I told my dad I was going to be a professional football player and he said all right so I told my dad that too by the way it did not work out for me so my dad told me all right well you do something to get yourself closer to that goal every day And at the time, I was like, awesome, dad wants me to make the NFL.

Many years later, I realized, like, no, dad saw this as an opportunity to teach me how to set goals and work towards them. So, like, I don't expect any of my kids or the kids that I'm coaching to, like, be professional athletes, but I do also try to use these opportunities as a chance to teach them. But the lesson that we learned this past season is that Coach Foxworth got a lemon booty in the second half of the championship game. We were up by two touchdowns and I got conservative when we blew the league. Lemon booty. Oh, Lord. I imagine it must be particularly difficult to have, to raise kids to play sports right now, given how expensive and like semi-professional youth sports has gotten. Because when I was coming up through soccer, it was like right at the start of like the club phenomenon in like youth soccer where I lived. And so by the time I was going to college, it had gotten

to where you couldn't play soccer at a high level without spending thousands of dollars. And luckily at that, before I got to that point, for me, I knew I wasn't good enough to keep playing. So I never felt like I was wasting that money or, like, couldn't take the opportunities that I had. But like, I think now it's starting even younger, right? Yeah. And we've avoided it. And so like, but how? So I asked my kids, frankly, and we've made it kind of a role as like one sport per season. and my daughter was like a standout soccer player when she was like eight years old

and they would always come and say hey you should really do travel and I asked my daughter do you want to do travel and she's like are my friends on that team? No never wanted to do travel soccer and I was like all right cool so we're not going to do travel soccer and as she got older so the reason why she's 13 now and she's finally running track

for the first time is because last year she was like I want to run track I want to run club track. And she came to me and asked to run club track. And I was like, all right, she did it multiple times over and over again. I was like, all right, we're going to put you in this. And I guess it's like my way of determining, like, how committed they are to this. And also making sure that it's something that they want to do.

Because that's another dynamic that me as a former athlete, it's like everyone assumes that they're going to do stuff. And I'm often wondering, like, why are they doing this? particularly with my son, who was like he wants to play tackle football so bad his entire life. And I won't let him at some point. I think I'm going to lose that battle. I'm going to have to let him. But it always is in the back of my mind is like, how much of this is because you really want to do this, or how much is this is because you think that you're supposed to or that this is an example of, like,

whatever it means to be like your dad or be a man or anything like that? Because that was the main motivation for me playing football was not to be like my dad. was because I thought the soft kids play basketball. And I was like, nah, I'm a tough kid. We play football. And I know, like, that stuff has to exist in some other way and be multiplied. So, like, it's tough being a sports dad. And the pressure that comes along with it is difficult, too, I think.

Did you watch the All-22 of the game you choked away? Yeah. So the first season I do with these kids, I was like, everyone gets playing time. We win and we lose. Who cares? Let's have fun. After that season, the boys, came to me and they were, I don't know, nine, ten years old, they came to me and was like,

we want to win. Like, stop playing these kids. They don't want to play. Stop scrimaging us and practice the whole time. Teach us stuff. We know you know football. We want to win. Stop running on all three downs. Let me throw a pass. I like how Dominique is playing hard to get. It's like, the Kung Fu master who's like, no, you don't get to learn how to do the one inch punch of death. I wish it was intentional. It wasn't an intentional strategy. It was because my son was switching schools, and my wife wanted him to maintain these friendships.

And she said the way we can keep this team together, essentially my general manager hired me to be the head coach without me asking to be head coach. She told me you're going to coach this team. And so I was like, all right, well, I'm a coach in my way. I told them that our team name was going to be the hugger bros. And we are going to run, we're going to allow everyone to play quarterback, every player and things.

So we were like a mediocre team because we had some, good athletes. But you hugged some bros. They wouldn't let me call them the hugger bros. They decided they wanted to be called the Tigers. But then they came to me. And then the next year, all right, so I'm committed to this. And I really am a hard, like, not like yelling or whatever, but like strict with them.

And we got better through the course of the year. We were the last seed in the playoffs. And we came from the last seat. Got all the way to championship game, two touchdown league in second half. And all of a sudden, me caring much more than I cared before, turned into me being a coward and running out the clock and getting us an L. Note to self. Having kids equals more content. Just kidding. So what is it about cheerleading, though, specifically?

I mean, you want me to make myself look even more like a Neanderthal? I don't know why I can't, I don't know how else to explain it anymore is that it feels like cheerleading is about being in service to the men who are actually doing it. And, like, I know that there is separate competitive cheer. But I do have that immediate reaction where it's like, no, but you can be the one that people are cheering for. There's been a lot written about the stomach. Oh, shit. And I set myself up to look like a...

No, not at all. A misogynist again? Well... A little bit. No. A weirdly feminist misogynist. It's like the trope of the cheerleader is like you're the perfect woman because you're supportive and enthusiastic to... towards men.

And that is something that I think a lot of people can read into cheerleading. And so, like, I don't obviously know how you remove that, if that's still the way that cheerleading exists for, like, at a youth level. But it doesn't necessarily have to be, like, a wrong thing, I guess. Like, it's, it's, I guess, I, as I mentioned before, I was half jokes and some of my best friends are cheerleaders. Like, no, I do know my one of my best friends from college. married his college girlfriend who was a cheerleader.

Like I know and they turn in. It's not that. There's more to it than just that. Right. And what I'm saying is it does, I know that it doesn't turn them into like submissive like wives. Back of the room. Like, you know, I recognize that.

But I'm just telling you that I know that it's a real endeavor. I'm saying that my immediate reaction, which I know was probably wrong, is like, in my mind, I'm like, oh, no, we're the doers in this family. we're the doers, we're not the cheerers. And that was the first time with my third kid that I ever had that. Because, like, I don't care if they're good. I just wanted to do it. And her, like, crying and falling out is, like,

that is the thing that offended me. When are you going to tell your kids that what you really do is a noble profession known as podcasting? I'm going to get my youngest. FYI, my job is also to support men because I work here. So, like, that will be a lesson that your daughter will learn at a young age and take with her into corporate America. So cheerleading is like, helps you get ready for the world.

What did we find out today, guys? At the end of every episode, Paul Burtory finds out, we say what we found out today. I will start as the father of a daughter. Oh. I am glad I have zero athletic genes to pass on because it sounds real complicated for all you guys having to figure out, am I going to be a cheerleader?

Am I going to be a football player? Am I going to be a professional basketball player, potentially? I like that we're not going to have. to deal with any of that stuff because I have fully leaned in to this job and I have nothing to pass on when it comes to my genetics. I found out that I am becoming the old conservative that I like to rail against. And I got to say, Pablo, I hate that I do your show so often. I've managed to not embarrass myself many times that I've done it.

But this time, I failed. No, no, I don't think. I don't think what I, well, you did. What I learned is, that you're basically Dan Quinn, coaching a championship game, giving up a big league. So that was the real headline here.

That was the most embarrassing thing. I think that happened to you. It was like 28 to 3. Damn. Yeah. I'll tell you guys what actually happened. Oh, God. Julian Edelman Jr. came in.

Had a crazy catch. It's fluky. It stuck to his helmet. They didn't call the holding? First overtime in Little League history, too, I heard. Nope. Jess, what did you find out so you can save us from Dominique trying to litigate

a game between two teams' names, We were the Tigers. I forgot that they seem same. Very good. Not like us is their name. Because they won champions. Damn. I learned that if I just throw a bunch of big words that you guys,

you think I'm saying something smart, which is just not the case. Yeah, of course. I get how you ended up here. How did that wind up a burn of me? I love her. She's the best. God damn.

I don't know. I had to flip it on you somehow. I found out that we didn't die in a fire today. Nice. Yet. Yeah, it's not over. We're still in this building. And we're dead. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Walter Avaroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rob McRae.

Rachel Miller, Howard, Ethan Shriar, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumenello, and Juliet Warren. Steve Engineering by RG Systems, sound designed by NGW Post, our theme song by John Bravo. All of us will see you on Tuesday.