AFLACking for Nothing…

… except #1 Billing (but they’re still pretty Duckin’ hot)

Sometimes finishing second can be depressing.  Just ask the Lakers.  Before the season, the Lakers were expected to barely make the Playoffs, and then peter out again with an early exit.  And that’s IF Kobe stayed and played.  Then came the rapid development of Andrew Bynum (thanks to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and suddenly the Lakers were expected to go a little further.

Then Bynum got injured, and things looked bleak once again.  Then in came Pau Gasol, and suddenly once again, the Lakers were expected to finish second, to Boston.  And that’s exactly what happened, with the League’s winningest team attaining Home Court Advantage, and going on to take the Title.

But if you’re the Lakers, and you come within two games of a World Championship, against a team that you’ve just beaten two out of three (and having led by 24 in the loss), and then lose by 39 as the Rival acts like spoiled school kids while you’re trying to finish the game with dignity, you’re damn right Second Place is depressing… even though no one could have even HOPED for this a year ago. 

But the Oregon Ducks Cheerleaders have NO reason to be depressed with Second Place.  There is absolutely no shame in being a runner-up to the UCLA Spirit Squad.  Not only that, but the surge of popularity for the Oregon squad is fairly recent, so in general, they aren’t trying to meet an EXPECTATION of being #1.

For those of you not following along with the sc Song Girl Controversy, or if you think that “no one cares” about the “status” of the different Pac-10 Cheerleading Units, all you need to do if check out Scott Wolf’s Daily News sc blog.  For weeks, his allegedly-trojan readers have flooded him with e-mail about what they call the shameful state of the Song Girl Program.  The most recent Song Girl thread had about ten times more comments than the average Football-related thread.  And the trojans are merciless, with their heartless insults about the current girls being overweight, out of shape, and downright ugly.  The feedback is about 98% in brutal agreement, just disagreeing on WHEN the blatant downslide started, and on WHO is responsible for it. 

We disagree with this horribly negative assessment.  Sure, the cookie-cutter Barbie Doll look is a thing of the past, but with increased academic requirements (yeah, right), the talent pool no longer allows for that.  Besides, Political Correctness demands a slightly altered demographic.  But none of these reasons come close to placating the irate trojan (un)faithful, and neither did our recent pictorials that TRIED to disprove their complaints.

But there is one thing in which 99.9% of all parties concur:  UCLA and Oregon have the best Spirit Squads.  Except for ONE single trojan who couldn’t stomach admitting it, everyone admires and is jealous of the Bruin Dance Team;  Meanwhile, the Oregon squad is the trendy pick, since they just popped out of the woodwork recently.

And that’s where this web site comes in.  We are sick and tired of this Duck bandwagon.  Their allure was fully exhibited here the day after they played in the Rose Bowl, with appropriate reverence.   We are NOT trying to say anything negative about them.  We immediately placed them above 8 other Pac-10 schools…

…but not over UCLA.  In our first few Duck Cheer pictorials, we shared nothing but the best of the Duck Girls — It was a veritable Oregon 2007 Hall of Fame.  Meanwhile, we expose the UCLA girls five times deeper.  We not only end up sharing the third-best batch (of 20-ish), but the fourth, and fifth, and sometimes tenth best batch, meaning that sometimes you see them when they are not at their absolute best.  Perhaps this is why some people are getting ahead of themselves with their mistaken rankings.

So today, we share the next 18 best (crispest) Duck shots that we have (out of the 60 or so that we have, that still hadn’t been posted yet).  And sure, the girls are hot, but as you’ll see, they are not as flawless as our previous spreads have made them out to be.

Again, we must reiterate that we are NOT trying to denigrate these fine, upstanding, young, and for the most part beautiful co-eds.  Like we said, we have 42 less-flattering shots that we could have selected if that was our goal.  We just think that after studying this collection, you will agree that they are fully deserving of the very respectable Silver Medal, for Second Place in the Pac-10.  And don’t forget:  All the photos have mouse-over captions.  Also, when you click on the photos, the girls practically jump out of your laptop, right into your lap.