RICK REILLY : Stand Up, Sit Down, Take a Hike

A little bit of Americana found itself on the expendables rack this week when the budget-conscious L.A. Express gave its cheerleaders the old . . .

Two, four, six, eight

Can you spell

Term-in-ate?

The pink slips came from the office of new Express C.E.O. Dick Stevens, a hand-picked henchman appointed by the league office to start making like David Stockman.

Originally, Stevens said one of the reasons the Express cheerleaders became extinct was to save the $39 per-woman, per-game fee. The next day, Stevens did a little shift to the left, shift to the right of his own and said the decision was not money at all, but a matter of “taste and image.” He didn’t think the cheerleaders’ “abbreviated costumes” were doing much for the Express image at the local Rotary Club.

Abbreviated? No. Economical? Yes.

The 34 erstwhile Expressettes wore Nancy Sinatra-white boots, ultra-hi-cut skirts and midriff tops cut low enough to make any quarterback lose track of his huts. True, the uniforms had less to do with Xs and Os than T and A, but we’re trying to save the club some money here, right? Do you have any idea how much spandex goes for these days? Think of it as a material savings.

Besides, the Express cheerleaders wore more or less (mostly less) what nearly every other USFL and NFL franchise parades out every weekend--to the unending gratitude of red-blooded American males with the good fortune to own a pair of binoculars.

But with doom and gloom in the accountant’s office, the Express had to decide between the two biggies in sports--money and sex. They chose money.

This is a team that rang up $17 million worth of red ink last year; a team that doesn’t own an owner; a team that can thank its current breathing status to USFL Commissioner Harry Usher, who bullied the rest of the league’s henpecked members to cough up $20 million to keep the Express one hash mark ahead of the bill collectors. You can therefore appreciate how hard it is to sneak another set of leg-warmers by the league bookkeeper.

After all, $39 will buy you plenty these days, not the least of which is the royal treatment at Earl Scheib’s. Could it have come down to that . . . rust or bust?

Stevens says he merely wants to appeal to a less prurient interest. Word is he may give it the ol’ college try--starting something known as a “spirit squad.” The spirit squad would be the Saturday afternoon variety, ponytails and preps and pyramids, complete with (shudder) male cheerleaders.

Distasteful as that may be, it would at least make the Express cheerleaders a novelty in pro football--actually living up to the billing. After all, when was the last time you saw a Dallas Cowgirl actually lead a cheer, much less do the splits? They can do 110 nifty moves to Prince’s Purple Rain, but fans generally do not follow along without a note from their chiropractor.

Stevens has had crazy ideas work before. He was the brains behind the Queen Mary and Spruce Goose attractions in Long Beach and being as neither one has sunk yet, perhaps he needn’t listen to us.

Like the Goose, we are not sure this one will fly. The Express averaged 15,000 fans last year in the 90,000-plus seat Coliseum, which allows far too many places for the habitual Express fan to hide. How is a member of the proposed Express spirit squad going to get them all together for one big, rousing cheer?

Hey, lady! You in the blue hat! Give me an ‘E’!’ ‘

And then there is this: Any team that is 0-2 and owning a season ticket bloc of 6,000 and has a player payroll of $78 million might do well to consider how many parents, boyfriends, husbands and families show up to watch the cheerers, not the cheerees. Guess how many of those might now find something better to do on Express game days, such as rotate their tires?

We are not advocating Prince over Preppy in all of this, but we do wonder if Mr. Stevens realized those 34 women spent three hours every Tuesday and Thursday night for the last three months perfecting their Expressions and suddenly find themselves pom-pon pensioners.

“Isn’t this a kick in the pants?” said Express cheerleader chief Cathleen Lally. “We worked so hard . . . and now this.”

Ms. Lally, however, has taken the news in true cheerleader spirit. She is pressing legal action against the team for alleged wrongful termination.

Stevens isn’t saying the cheerleaders were fired, he’s just saying they were put on “leave of absence without pay.” This is also the difference between “passed on” and “dead.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to end up with,” Stevens says. “We may end up with dancing dogs. Who knows?”

To anyone who has watched Stevens’ team perform lately, that might just be appropriate.