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Basketball used to be the gay sport - tall men running around in short shorts. Of course, nearly everyone from the 80s seemed gay, especially rock stars with their tight-fitting, fashion-mugging clothes and gaudy jewelry.

I’m not saying that football players are gay. There’s nothing like bashing other men over a ball to demonstrate masculinity. It’s just that the person who designed the game and started the traditions made his/her (?) best attempt to transform an undeniably manly, aggressive, eats-meat-raw kind of game into a big gay tea party. Thankfully, the sheer brutality of the game masks this fact, although it becomes painfully apparent if you sit around and think about it for a long time because you have no life.

Giant, adult, burly men…wearing spandex. Ouch. Furthermore, in all other sports the players start each play standing, yet in the only sport where the players are wearing spandex they start bending over with their butts in the air. Then they put another guy behind the guy with his butt in the air, so the first guy’s butt is in the second guy’s face. Unfortunately, the quarterback has nowhere to look but straight ahead because he needs to be ready to catch the hike. They could just have the quarterback start with the ball or they could even have the player on the other team, whose butt is not facing the quarterback, pass the ball to the quarterback like check in basketball.

Another aspect of football uniforms that is “gay” football is padding. I understand that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for wearing padding – to enhance one’s physique. The shoulder pads on football players are similar to the ones sewn to the lining of women’s coats.

And how do football players stop their opponents? In other sports the defender stands in front of his opponent. Unfortunately for football, that’s simply not gay enough. In football they have to belly-flop on top of each other. There is also the tradition of diving on top of a stationary, growing pile of men even when it’s obvious that the guy on the bottom isn’t going anywhere.

Football players are also a little too friendly when their teammate makes a good play. They get caught up in their joy, and obviously the only way to express their jubilation is through physical contact Sometimes I think that if they didn’t have helmets they’d kiss each other…on the cheeks of course. However, that’s how most sports are, regardless of the gender.

Then there is that little football dance they do in the end zone. It’s damn hard to look manly dancing in the first place. In my opinion, there is something gay about any man dancing, but that’s really my problem.

Thankfully, there are cheerleaders, who help alleviate the gayness. Compared to cheerleaders, almost anything is unfeminine, and how can you call a sport gay when attractive women in skimpy uniforms are cheering the men on? Of course, there are the male cheerleaders…

Don’t get me started on wrestling.