LSU's other football factory

LSU football has long been a pipeline to the NFL, with more than two dozen former Tigers expected to make rosters this year. Around here, we know that. We can recite the names at a tailgate with one hand in a bag of Zapp’s.

Less well known is another LSU route into the bright lights of pro football: the Golden Girls and Tiger Girls. They have danced for cheerleading squads across the league. A few have reached the top of the game: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Making the DCC squad requires the stamina of a marathon runner, the personal courage of a school teacher, and the charm of a kitten in a social media video. The Netflix show about the squad has become wildly popular, turning auditions into something between a job interview, a boot camp and a beauty pageant.

In the latest season, a woman from Metairie—a place the show’s hosts mispronounce—survives the first screening, only to be cut for an indignity almost too absurd to print: At 5-foot-3, she is considered too short for some of the required moves.

But others have made the leap from Louisiana to Dallas.

They include LSU's Tess Guidry of Baton Rouge, who made the squad on her third attempt and danced for five years. She is now the director of the Miami Hurricanes college squad.

LSU's Cersten Bradley made it in her first year. As if accomplishing one challenge in life was not enough, she went to medical school and now practices family medicine in Texas.

Two former Tiger Girls are now on the squad: Ariel Brumfield of White Castle and Darah Haidet of Hammond, who spent her entire LSU senior year training for DCC auditions and made it as a rookie.

Football gets most of the attention. But LSU has that other pro pipeline, too—one built on high kicks, hard work and the particular gift of smiling while doing a move that is far more difficult than it looks.

They're Thunderstruck!