In twist of events, Nyheim Hines spins truth about cheerleading involvement

If you were able to watch yesterday’s game or not, by now you’ve no doubt seen Nyheim Hines touchdown celebrations. Hines displayed impressive athleticism not only on the plays that got him into the end zone but during his tumbling celebrations after.

When I saw Hines’ celebration my eyes lit up, not only because it was a cool celebration, but because I have a lot of personal experience with the kind of acrobatics Hines displayed having coached gymnastics for nearly a decade (most of my 20’s). It’s been a few years since I’ve been in a gym and it would take a while to get my eyes up to speed to breakdown something like Hines celebrations in real time, especially through a TV screen. It’s difficult to watch a kid do a complex skill that takes a fraction of a second to complete and then provide accurate and detailed feedback or corrections, if you do it every day it gets easier and eventually you get good at it, as it stands I’m pretty rusty at seeing things live but fortunately I have it on tape and could watch it as much as I wanted.

So naturally I went to Twitter as I didn’t think that kind of breakdown would necessarily fit here on Stampede Blue. I tagged Nyheim Hines (for folks without Twitter, that means he was more likely to actually see/look at the post) because I thought if I was going to invest even a little bit of time into the thread, I was going to shoot my shot to see if I could get him to respond or even just “like” the post.

What I got was a scandal for the ages.

Here is the thread and exchange between Hines and myself:

So I posted all of that to be a little silly but also because I thought someone might actually enjoy it. I didn’t really think that Hines would see it much less actually respond to it but to my delight, he took the time to respond!

At first I didn’t think much of his response, I didn’t really think it through.

Hines “liked” this post but didn’t respond.

Apparently Stephen Holder of The Athletic enjoyed the thread:

Before he re-Tweeted my thread it hadn’t received much attention but Holder fixed that little issue for me. I was enjoying the interaction with everyone seeing and seemingly enjoying the post but as I thought about his explanation more, something didn’t add up.

I watched some pro wrestling growing up, as a lot of boys my age did and Jeff Hardy never put a roundoff in front of his full twists. He was always jumping off of something onto some shirtless guy with long hair. In no time, someone had tagged me on a post that proved my analysis was correct and NYHEIM HINES IS A LIAR!

It turns out that Nyheim Hines twin sister told Colts reporter and producer Larra Overton that he learned to tumble by working with the CHEER TEAM in high school.

After I posted the screenshot of Larra Overton’s Tweet refuting Nyheim’s claims on my post he responded to this exchange between myself and Twitter user @PeteinWI:

Again, this came after I made the post questioning his story citing Larra Overton’s report. Hines never commented on that. He also never addressed Overton’s report directly.

While it’s possible my estimation of where he learned to tumble is flawed, I truly am educated on the topic. I feel 10x more confident saying that he tumbles more like a cheerleader than a gymnast, than I do when I write an opponent scouting report and tell you all what to expect to see from the opponent during the next Colts game. And it’s not because I’m some hack taking guesses, I do a lot of work on the scouting reports, I know what I’m talking about but football, especially at the NFL level, is so variable from week to week it’s possible I can put in all the work and still manage to be very wrong.

Tumbling is a little different. For 3-4 years my fulltime job was coaching athletes to do exactly what Hines did and I spent another 6-7 years doing it a few nights a week once my schedule and “real job” started to take up more of my time. So I stand by my analysis that I strongly believe, just based on his technique, he was taught by cheerleading instructors.

Nyheim Hines, for one reason or another doesn’t want to publicly admit he was either on the cheer team or learned his skills from cheerleaders while he was in high school but it’s pretty clear to me, his sister and Larra Overton that Nyheim Hines lied when he Tweeted that he never had any training.

Even with a historic presidential election starting in less than 24 hours, this scandal will surely prove to be the most historically significant scandal of the 2020 NFL season and I’m proud to be the one to break it.