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I can just
image how the idea for this was conceived. One day, some member of
Midway's personnel team was watching a sporting event, reliving glory days
that never were since he didn't make his high school basketball team,
warming his genitals during those clips of dancers they sometimes show just
as they come back from a commercial break.
"Sigh," says the disheveled rank-and-file
level Midway minion, "I wish I can have a girl like that." Somebody at Midway Sports thought it would be a good idea to employ the services of a couple official company cheerleaders. Enough shot-callers at the Chicago-based company agreed the level of good in this idea was enough such that a sizable campaign would be launched throughout spring 2003 with this goal in mind. They also thought it would be a good idea to have 24 semi-finalists, to be reduced down to five by a group of experts in the field of cheerleader selection including star baseballer Jim Edmonds and some guy who happened to win a judging place. They also thought it would be a good idea to entrust the proletariat with the ultimate decision in deciding which two girls would represent the company. They also thought it would be a good idea to restrict the publication of this contest to news hubs on game websites, because this is obviously where the best cheerleaders spend their free time. Needless to say, such a crusade hasn't been embarked upon since and there are no foreseeable plans to do so again. And it's not hard to see why. Some of these entries are simply humiliating. I don't really know what Midway was looking for, but I'd be willing to truly reckon they believed the pool of talent before them was much deeper than it proved to be. If some of these videos are among the top couple dozen (out of up to 15,000!), I can only wonder what kind of wincing I would do upon seeing the worst entries. The only way I can fathom some of these entries qualifying in any Top 24 would be if there were only 24 video submissions. Anywho, the winning two girls received a $5,000 contract, a deal with something called Famous Faces Entertainment Talent and Model Agency (yes, bereft of commas), exposure for Midway in game and out, and probably something else I am not recalling at the current moment. Upon research, the said agency only seems to exist in news archives in game websites, and is most probably some big, fat, ugly pervert with a cheap 35mm camera who thinks he's the next Ron Jeremy. While the girls did get in game expose in the next Slugfest game (indeed, they make appearances in loading screens, and there are some videos of the winners talking on the Slugfest Reloaded disc), we all know outside exposure is really just code name for 'pass out pamphlets for our crap n busy, nerd-packed places in your undies.' As stated before, I don't know what Midway was looking for in their next spokesladies. I don't image their standards were too rigorous considering much of what passed as the best entries. I do know that I am looking for something cheerleadry - a girl who displays energy, passion for something at least tangential to the product (in the biz it's called spirit), poise/articulation and dancing ability (then again, this might be too suggestive for this and future E3 conventions, although it's hard to deny the foot/eye coordination/cheerleader correlation). I also score extra points for girls in skimpy clothes, not because I'm a horny bastard, but because if you're the winner of this competition, you're going to be spending considerable time in clothes revealing considerable skin, so comfort in showing some now is a plus. I could embellish the introduction further, but I didn't expect you to make it this far down the page. I will conclude that IGN seems to have gotten a hand in this competition as all 24 semi-finalists have their videos still available for download here (you need to be an IGN insider to access them). You can see an annoying IGN watermark on the bottom left of virtually all the snapshots here. I may youtube the vids, but I'm not one to needlessly test obtuse copyright laws any more than I already am. Click here to progress to contestant #1's entry. (PS don't be vexed by the cheerleader jargon used here. Don't worry, I'm all man, although not so much man that I can't remember some of the blabbering a quasi-cheerleader chick I was with told me or that I can't look up the words I needed to know) |