Steelers and Packers lack their own squads.

Super Bowl XLV will take place in the home of the most storied NFL cheerleaders of all, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, in a stadium actually fitted with cages for them to dance in.

But neither the stolid Green Bay Packers nor the gritty Pittsburgh Steelers will bring a squad - the first Super Bowl in 43 years without cheerleaders.

The Packers, who use college cheerleaders at Lambeau Field, and the Steelers, who did away with the Steelerettes in 1970 - citing fan indifference - are two of six NFL teams that do not have their own squad, the others being the similarly corner-pub-rooted (and Northern-climed) New York Giants, Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears, and Cleveland Browns.

So if you want to see cheerleaders Sunday night, you'll have to wait until after the game, when a blue-wigged squad from Glee takes over the airwaves Katy Perry-style, pyrotechnics bursting out of strategically placed megaphones.

While reactions to this watershed cultural moment varied (ranging, as a Fox News story groaningly put it, from "S-A-D" to "G-L-A-D"), it also elicited the more common refrain: "Who cares?"

"I wasn't even aware of the fact there would be no cheerleaders at the Super Bowl," Enrico Campitelli Jr. of "The 700 Level," a sports-fan blog in Philadelphia, said in an e-mail. "I guess that tells you how much most people care."

Barbara Zaun, director of the Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders, sees it differently. "I know that if we were in the Super Bowl, and we weren't on the sidelines," she said, "our fans would definitely notice."

Maybe so. We love our Eagles cheerleaders, not to mention our Wingettes. But Syracuse University pop-culture and television expert Robert Thompson said the Super Bowl has become such an orgy of hype and entertainment that the role of the cheerleaders was so minimal as to be barely missable.

"In an odd sort of way, the fact that it's a cheerleaderless Super Bowl has become one more way to hype it," he said. "The role of cheerleaders, while it certainly added texture - you'd go to the cheerleader shot - they have not been an integral part of the broadcast."

Or, as A.J. Daulerio of the sports uber-blog "Deadspin" suggested, the Super Bowl commercials may be a decent-enough substitute.

"I think the GoDaddy.com commercials will more than compensate for the lack of skin and general tawdriness resulting from no cheerleaders," Daulerio said Wednesday by phone.

As these things do, the cheerleader-free Super Bowl provided a springboard to all sorts of cheerleader-related societal fault lines, touching on everything from pornography to Title IX to mom.

Over at Bodog.net, where a petition was started to bring back the cheerleaders, the issue was being fought on the basics. "It is our humble opinion that a Super Bowl without cheerleaders is like Mom's Apple Pie without the à la mode," the petitioners assert, all 69 of them at last count.

All for want of a high-kicking, pom-pom-waving, midriff-and-cleavage-exposing, for-better-or-for-worse, somewhat-retro female icon.

The discussion gets dicey. For years, cheerleaders on the recreational and school level have worked to up their image from the 1950s popular it-girl line of queen-bee movers and shakers to a grueling, competitive team sport taking in gymnastics, dance, strength, and agility.

NFL cheerleaders are not always welcome to this club.

Karen Drew, director of Elite Cheer Competition in Laurel Springs, said her attention would be elsewhere. "We are more focused this weekend on our competitions than on the Super Bowl," she said. "We don't really consider that cheerleading."

Laura Grindstaff, a sociologist at the University of California-Davis, who has written extensively about cheerleading, said the NFL cheerleaders were still a by-product of "the whole male sports-media industrial complex."

"It's not surprising that professional cheerleaders are basically eye candy on the sidelines," she said. "Professional sports is missing an opportunity to kind of update its really outdated notion of cheerleading. It's not in their nature."

Indeed, the Packers use cheerleaders from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and another school for their home games. They paid their own way to Super Bowls XXXI and XXXII, the last two times the Packers reached the game.

But coach Ann Rodrian said the Packers had not included them this time. She told the Green Bay Press Gazette that the team had said, "The role of cheerleaders has changed." The Packers said they considered the cheerleaders solely part of home-game rituals.

NFL cheerleaders do not, as a rule, travel with their team, even in the playoffs. The Super Bowl has been the one exception. "When we cheer at home, we're normally at all four corners of the field," explained Zaun, of the Eagles Cheerleaders. No room for the visitor squad.

"I think cheerleaders are a great addition to the team," she said, adding that the cheerleaders do lots of community work. "Our cheerleaders add a lot to game-day entertainment, getting up close and personal with our fans."

The Eagles cheerleaders do not perform at halftime, after fan surveys showed there was more interest inside the Linc for a halftime NFL wrap-up than a dance routine, Zaun said. "I think the cheerleaders are used by teams according to what their goals are with marketing and promotion."

The issue divides cheerleader moms into two camps: those who see the NFL squads as worthy carriers of the cheerleading tradition, and those who simply do not.

The Super Bowl absence is "a shame," said Denise Savastano of the Egg Harbor Township Eagles cheerleading organization. "As far as viewing time goes, they don't get much. I do think it's important. It brings a lot of unity and team spirit."

But Anne Marie Maratea of the Pennsbury Falcons Cheerleading Association sees little connection with what her daughters do and aspire to. "That's not what I want for them," she said. "We kind of sometimes get a bad rap because of that image. The way those girls on the sidelines are portrayed is more sexist, more racy."

Still, as far as visibility and a place on the field at the Super Bowl, this was pretty much it for women, other than a sideline reporter or two (and Fergie, at halftime).

"There's nothing wrong with being a beautiful, sexy woman in public," said Grindstaff, of UC-Davis. "The problem is when that's women's primary arena of expression, the only way you get any public visibility in society."

In any case, it's still quite possible that the Dallas cheerleaders will somehow save the Super Bowl from its cheerleaderless fate. They will perform outside the stadium in a special tent with a big screen and a $200 ticket price.

"They've tried to get us in the game," cheerleader Cory DePasquale told reporters, "but the NFL just won't let us. They've covered up every star, every Dallas Cowboys logo."

Campitelli, of "The 700 Level," said he wouldn't be surprised if the well-equipped stadium turned up a cheerleader or two.

"Did you look into those strange dancing cages/poles they have?" he said by e-mail. "I wouldn't be shocked if 'Cheerleaders/dancers' show up there at some point in the telecast."

And there you go. At the very least, a perfect new category for a Super Bowl proposition bet: Will a Dallas cheerleader show up on TV?

One thing is for sure. The folks at Glee have analyzed the Super Bowl lead-in audience and have concluded that what will keep the menfolk watching is . . . cheerleaders, some in bikinis. "We put stuff in there," Glee coproducer Brad Falchuk said, "understanding there are a lot of dudes who watch the Super Bowl."