Warning: this blog post is a little longer than usual, for good reason.

If you had to pick a day to have some sort of computer problem, wouldn't the last day you'd pick be the day you were going to blog about an NFL team's cheerleader tryout? With photos?

Welcome to my life. That was me on Saturday morning, when I got the always-welcome invitation to help judge the Ravens cheerleader tryouts at the Downtown Athletic Club, and had the further brilliant idea to take a couple of cellphone-camera shots of the participants and add them to this post.

That was before I realized, later in the day - after I made the painful decision to leave early to cover some game in College Park - that getting in and out of this system was incredibly difficult this day, and the rest of the weekend. And before whatever magic I'd discovered in getting shots of Jack Nicholson's Oscar-night bald head posted last week had disappeared by the time I tried to get the photos up here. I really could have used a techie who worked weekends.

I mean, why blog about a cheerleader tryout if you don't have photos?

You'll have to be satisfied with the pictures accompanying this article on the Ravens website, even though it appears the photo came from last year's tryouts, or at least from some practice at the Castle in Owings Mills. The tryouts Saturday were in one of the rooms that hold the big exercise classes at the DAC. And you'll have to trust me that the overwhelming percentage of women trying out were fine - apparently because you can't just show up off the street thinking you can go dance on an NFL sideline eight or more times every fall; the 200 tryouts were weeded from several hundred more who applied and had to send in, among other things, photos of themselves in bikinis or a sports bra and shorts. Not too much pressure there.

Clearly, many of the judges were not chosen by the same criteria. The judges, by the way, besides me, were plenty of Ravens employees, including some from Ravens TV, plus several radio personalities. We sat at a long table, had grading sheets in front of us, and the tryouts were paraded in front of us in groups of four, onto a floor with tape marks on them to tell them where to stand, run and leap when asked. It looked a lot like a Broadway audition, or the tryouts for "Fame.'' Overseeing the whole thing - the tryouts and the judges - were cheerleading coordinator Tina Galdieri and dance coach Tracy Ricker, at least one of whom should have been holding an enormous cane and pounding it on the floor yelling "FIVE-SIX-SEVEN-EIGHT'' the way Debbie Allen did, but who both were a lot more low-key and less dramatic.

By the way, one of the categories on the grade sheet was "physical appearance,'' to be graded on a scale of 1 to 20. And we were told not to feel bad about giving extra weight to the hot-looking candidates and letting that sway a close decision. Thank God they don't choose columnists that way (see above). Nevertheless, I knew that was going to be a tough call, because when I arrived about a half-hour before the actual tryouts began, I watched all the candidates, spread out across the basketball court, getting a crash course in the mandatory dance move. Then my glasses steamed up, and I went to a back room to join the other judges and suck down a bottle of water.

Give the candidates credit: they were all very professional, and they either were in character the entire time or they are all genuinely nice young women. They had no way to know I was a future judge; I could have been just some buffoon who sneaked down from the gym to the restricted area to gawk, yet they were all very smiley and polite as they walked past me back and forth to wherever they were going. They were also the same way as they waited their turn to be judged; you walk by, nod, say hello, wish them good luck, and they smile back, say thanks, and keep rolling. There could have been mass snubbing of anyone that walked by that couldn't help them get to their eventual goal, but there was none that I noticed.

That, clearly, is a big part of doing this: you have to be "on'' at all times. They do appearances year-round, so they really are much more than just pom-pom wavers on football Sundays.

Now, how they handle the pressure of performing like this is amazing, although anyone involved in the performing arts can understand. They have to look stunning, perform all the feats - many of which are Olympic gymnast-level stunts - really project their personalities and impress the judges in every way possible, in a span of about five minutes.

Sadly, I only got the chance to mercilessly scrutinize every physical and psychological flaw of about 20 women. And four men. They didn't mention that until I got there, and the men went first, even though I only had a limited time to judge before heading to the Maryland-N.C. State game. Gotta admit, though, you're less likely to mock a male cheerleader after you've seen him, close-up, holding a grown-up woman in the air by one foot with one hand for what's only a few seconds, but must feel like an eternity, and then either catch her by the waist on the way down, or her entire body in both arms as she twists out of her midair pose. And they had to do the standing backflips and running forward tumbles the same way the women did. One guy did it while wearing a knee brace. I really didn't find any of them particularly "hot,'' though.

Then came the women (yay!), and some of them were absolutely stunning. And at least two of them looks so fit, without an ounce of extra fat, that they probably could run back kicks for the Ravens if B.J. Sams'   leg doesn't heal fast enough. When I said earlier that they did routines you usually see at the Olympics, I wasn't exaggerating; some of the judges' most outward reactions were not to their physical attributes, it was to the flips and spins they were doing. One pulled off a move while being held in the air on one foot that made everybody gasp. I can't imagine her not making the cut to Sunday, final group of about 35, much less made the team, period. Another got so caught up in her forward flip, she almost flipped herself right into a table at the end of the room. (We anticipated at least one candidate doing that; after all, you don't have an entire sideline to work with.)

Sadly, there were others who struggled with what was a pretty basic dance move. It's a little embarrassing to lose the beat mid-routine in front of a row of judges when you've only got about 32 beats to do. Others clearly were best at looking good, not so much performing well. Still others seemed to be trying too hard, or intimidated by the others in their group. Sometimes one candidate would do her jump and hang in the air like Michael Jordan, and you could see the others mentally walk out of the room and right out the front door, defeated.

It was harsh and borderline demeaning. I wished I could have stayed longer.

And I'll be checking out next season's group to see if anyone I saw made it. One in particular, if you know what I mean. Well, you would know what I mean if I could figure out how to get some photos up here.

Coming up later ... speaking of unbelievable, inexplicable moves while in mid-air, we discuss the Gerald Henderson-Tyler Hansbrough play from the UNC-Duke game.