Well, football is different than other sports - there is no "travel" in football. No tryouts, no cuts. The "tryout" aspect comes in when deciding who starts vs who gets their 10 plays/game, but we have that covered as well - our Mission Statement is clear (AND followed!) - to teach the sports of football and cheer in a safe, fun environment where winning is always secondary to building character, teamwork, discipline, and respect for self and others. The W's will take care of themselves in time. Playtime is earned by hard work, good attitude, and proving that you are willing to put team over self. That means showing up to practice instead of sleeping in or playing video games, or missing that birthday party to make the Saturday game. Of course there are always kids who will be better players, but DH is the football director and makes sure each team peppers the less-skilled kids in with the more experiences kids on a line so that they can all get playtime, instead of the typical sending your ringers in, taking them ALL out and putting your less-athletic kids in just to get crushed for 4 downs or get scored on, then pulling them off the field and putting your starters back in. Game schemes like that don't do anyone any good, and we make it a point not to let any of our coaches do it.
As for cheer, people will either do rec competitive cheer or all-star. They either want to cheer for a football team+competitions, or they just want to train for competitions. We don't have a lot of cross-over. We are also no-cut and place girls strictly by grade. If our registration numbers are awkward one year - for ex - 26 girls in k-2nd, but only 11 in 3rd-4th, we will move up a number of 2nd graders to even out the teams, but we then go by birthday - oldest girls move up first. Our goal for cheer is to make sure every girl on the team has a chance to shine with a special part, tumbling sequence, being in front for part of the routine, etc. From day one, we decided that nobody would be the superstar on our teams - if a girl/mom doesn't like that, they are free to go and pay thousands of $$ for all-star. Our girls are trained using the techniques the HS cheer teams use, and it does give them a leg up when trying out in the spring of 8th grade.
In our area, which is fairly affluent, youth travel sports are HUGE. It has definitely infiltrated into the school system (football excluded, it's just different altogether). Basketball is the worst here - we have a serious youth feeder league that starts at 5 years old, and by 3rd grade teams are consistently formed by draft and they tend to move up the ranks together. The coaches (parent volunteers) will then take their entire team and register them with the very highly "rec" league that is the only place kids who haven't played for years already even have a chance of playing. Of course these power-teams crush these little 8 year olds that are just thrown together in the rec league, then they move on to Middle School, where they all try out together and make it, again shutting out all the other kids. Now you have a group of 6th graders who play with the feeder league, then the "off-season" rec league, AND the middle school team. Eventually, they all go to AAU together, and then try out for the HS team. Kids who can't, or won't commit to all of that by age 5-6 are effectively shut out completely. My kids dabbled in basketball just for fun since they have always been more interested in football, but I have seen these parents/teams in action over the years enough to be completely disgusted by it! The same ones take over baseball, too, but my kids hated playing baseball so our stints in little league were short-lived.