I was sitting around thinking, and I came to a sudden realization: football needs to be gayer.
Sure, it's already pretty gay. I mean, between the muscle-accenting tight pants, the fabulous uniforms, the butt-slaps for silly reasons, the "tight ends" and "wide receivers," and the goal of tackling people to get to their balls, I'd say it's pretty gay already. But, in a funny way, there's room for improvement.
As it stands, most sports are homophobic, but in my opinion, football in particular should change its gay policy. It's one of the few sports that rely heavily on communication, prediction, and fairly precise synchrony of movement and timing. And, at the risk of making it sound too much like a fetish blown out of proportion, I think that some of the best offensive matches would be boyfriends. That is, literally the quarterback and the wide receiver should be dating.
On its surface, it sounds like a silly, unnecesary, and strange product of a libido gone crazy. But, upon further analyzation, one realizes that it's actually quite a sound idea:
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I originally thought about this while watching a football game and thinking back in history to the
Sacred Band of Thebes, which was an elite troop force of all-gay soldiers that served Greece. Their uniqueness and their eliteness, it seemed, arose from the fact that they were all going to battle with their boyfriends; so, they knew that each would always have each other's asses-- sometimes in the most literal sense. If you were one of them and you failed to triumph successfully, you weren't just risking your life, you were risking your lover's as well, and I would assume their eliteness derived not from simple experience alone, but the unique bonds amongst the soldiers.
I see football as possibly benefiting from the same conditions. Let's imagine for a bit, shall we?
Take an average high school football or college team. Sure there's some skill and some size, and both skill and size are needed in many positions. Given the size of a team, it ends up that not all of them will be gay, and not all of them will like each other sexually. But, when it comes to selecting key positions-- mainly, the quarterback and the wide receivers-- I would argue that instead of basing the selection on skill alone, greater emphasis could be placed on selecting gay couples.
Again, it sounds silly, but think about it: if the quarterback and the receiver of choice were boyfriends, both would be more inclined to never let the other down. The quarterback would have an animalistic drive to throw the ball well, for if he doesn't, he's not letting down his coach or his football buddy-- he's letting his boyfriend down. The receiver, similarly, will do everything he can to catch the ball, and at the very least will attempt to prevent the pass from being intercepted. He does this because just like the quarterback, he doesn't want to let his boyfriend down. On any normal team, if he missed the pass or dropped the ball, it just sucks rocks and he'll probably get hell about it either from his coach or his teammates, but when it comes to the "alternative" team, there's much, much more at stake emotionally; thus, there might be a greater drive to success.
Moreover, in a good relationship, the emotional connectedness and the unity and clarity of thought seem to border on psychic ability. So, when pairing a quarterback and wide receiver together, presumably the quarterback would predict the receiver's movements better, and the receiver would predict the quarterback's passes and timing better as well.
This also opens the board to more fun and playful rewards and punishments given the outcomes of practices and games. For example, if the team wins, scores a certain number of touch downs, or completes a certain number of passes, they get to have lots of sex after the game. However, if they lose, make too many interceptions, or drop too many balls, by agreed upon rule sex is off for at least a couple days, if not the entire week. Something tells me that there'd be more drive to win if ass is literally on the line.
If it ends up that you can't find a gay offensive couple (QB/WR is clearly the ideal), it might also be possible to pair up other members of the offense competitively with members of the defense. Say, for example, a cornerback (a defensive guy that follows the wide receiver for passes) is dating a wide receiver, or a safety (kind of like the defensive quarterback but stops people running the ball) is dating a running back (the offensive guy who normally runs the ball). Between them, they could have competitions during games to see who can defensively stop or offensively advance the most yards with respect to each other.
For example, if the cornerback intercepts or stops more passes from the other team than his boyfriend, a wide receiver, can catch from his own team while on offense, the cornerback would "win" regardless of the game's actual outcome. They could say that whoever "wins" gets to top/bottom, decide where to have sex, decide to which movie to cuddle, etc. The idea here is that with the two boyfriends competing within the team on opposite sides of the game (one offense and one defense), the team as a whole benefits because with both sides at their best, the offense would score a bunch of touchdowns and the defense would stop the opposition from getting anywhere.
Plus, victory would be so much sweeter. No longer would they be simply happy to win or sad to lose, but the game and the processing processes as a whole would be something that they, as a couple, would experience and actively determine as first person agents.
There are, of course, logistical limitations. You'd pretty much only be limited to one ideal gay couple on the offense, even though there would be multiple receivers. This is where the skill factor comes into play. Sure, you might only have 1 out of 3 or so possible wide receivers dating the QB, but the other two would presumably be of normal skill and normal drive. So, even though you don't have a 100% gain, 33% is still significant. With respect to offense-defense couples, there would be no limit.
Though, since human attraction is weird and unpredictable, it would be hard to find boyfriends with affinities for the positions that would be beneficial; and, physical stature might not mix either. Even finding gay people can be extremely difficult in high school and college who have interest in sports, because society still frowns upon homosexuality as a whole, and even moreso homosexuality in sports. Of course, this might change if it was suddenly forced to realize that the best teams had the gayest relationships, but this is kind of chicken and egg.
There also exists the problem that many gay guys don't really find nearly as much interest in sports as their straight counterparts. While this might be a problem in terms of true love of the sport, I would argue that it allows for a unique disconnect. As long as the gay guys possessed interest and motivation to succeed, they could accomplish much with fairly quick learning curve; and, it would be even more pronounced and possibly the most beneficial if the couples had one experienced and one inexperienced player. Not only would practice be a bonding experience, they would also quickly learn and communicate effectively the keys to success, and the inexperienced player would be molded to the experienced player's style and ability. All in all, they would be each other's stars.
Even better, these otherwise inexperienced players haven't been drilled their entire lives into a rigid way of playing the game, even if their boyfriends have. Sure, they enter the game at a relatively late period, but in doing so, they bring with them a completely different way of analyzing and interpreting the game as a whole. They would remain unjaded by past failure, and they would lack the haughty throes of heroic success. As long as they were motivated enough by their boyfriends to succeed, they'd be a coach's dream—so long as the coach, as well, was motivated to spend the time to develop the newbie’s skill.
In the end, football could go for a little more gayness. Realistically, this presents considerable challenges, but considering the nature of the game and the changes involved, considerable gains could be had by overcoming the inherent obstacles to implementation.
So, in what would seem like a silly proposition, logic and rationale exists. It’d totally be a fun experiment to see if gaying it all up would do any good—that is, if it’s at all possible to implement it without look like a complete perv.
Who knows.
Cheers. =)
