Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders › Season 2 › Main

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team

It is arguably the most famous uniform in all of professional sports. The white and blue star-spangled outfits of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders have unquestionably become an iconic symbol of America.

Since their first championship days in the 1970s, the Dallas Cowboys have been called America's Team and their famed cheerleaders, America's Sweethearts. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have been often imitated throughout the league but never equaled in terms of beauty, style, athleticism and worldwide popularity.

They are the only cheerleading squad to make history, making countless appearances in film and television. Their television movie, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (1980), remains the second highest rated television movie of all time. This year, the DCC has had invitations to appear in over 30 countries and have performed with everyone from Beyonce to Shania Twain. Simply, they were the first true dancing troupe of beautiful women to perform in the NFL, and they have remained a phenomenon.

In Texas, where football is religion, the opportunity for a woman to make the team is akin to winning the lottery. It brings instant celebrity and career opportunities. It changes your life.

In this series, CMT will bring you the inside story of selecting this year's Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders squad with all the emotion and drama as thousands of women hope to fill the 36-member team.

It is an intense, grueling four-month process that begins in April as thousands of hopefuls descend on historic Texas stadium for the open calls and ends in August as the final team greets the players at the first preseason home game in front of 50,000 fans.

The DCC is not just looking for another pretty face. This is a precision dance troupe that must master jazz to hip-hop. Each Sunday, they are in nonstop action. Hence they are searching for women who are true athletes.

There are three main characters who will ultimately decide each woman's fate. Director Kelli Finglass, a former DCC, is the heart and soul of the organization. She knows what it takes to be a DCC. She knows what she needs from each girl. And she demands it throughout every moment of the audition process. Judy Trammell, the DCC choreographer, challenges the women to learn routines and perform as a team. She knows early on if a woman has got game.

And then there's Jay Johnson, a former Army drill sergeant, who makes Lou Gossett in Officer and a Gentleman seem like a wimp. Johnson is in charge of DCC boot camp, an intensive schedule of strength, conditioning and attitude training, based on how it's done in the U.S. Army.

These three characters will judge which girls continue to make the cuts as the field is reduced from 1,000 to 300 to 75 to the approximately 45 who start boot camp and the 36 who will make it to the first game.

This is not your mother's beauty contest. Sure, each girl has to be attractive but, most important, they have to prove themselves in a range of categories that include: athleticism (specific requirements for everything from crunches to running the mile), dance (a range of performances, from freestyle to being able to interpret a tightly choreographed routines), football knowledge (yes, you have to prove you know the game via a variety of tests), personality (you are representing the Dallas Cowboys, the NFL, and a 50-year history of tradition) and overall style.

In this series, we will primarily focus on eight to 12 women (including first-time hopefuls and veterans hoping to re-qualify for the team) through the selection process. We want to drive the show with a personal, sound-on-tape, in-the-moment voice. And we want to tell great stories as candidates fight off their own fatigue and insecurities, the pressures from family and friends, the camaraderie and conflict as the selection process accelerates. In short, we want to know who these women are and care about them.

The DCC has never been covered in such an intense, personal way. CMT will have full access to all activities and behind-the-door decisions. It's this year's story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, a big slice of American pop culture, told from the inside out.