Best Superbowl photo ever

Thanks for sharing this wonderful Superbowl photo, Shelley!

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

Nice one, Brainspore.
stegodon

i’m straight, and although i played football in high school, i don’t think i’ve ever managed to sit through an entire televised game. boooring. a gay friend was ripping on me last week because i didn’t know the teams in the superbowl, “god, you are such a snttbg!” so, there’s that.
Anonymous

As a person who is not into sports, if the SB was more like this I would totally get into it.
Antinous / Moderator

You forgot Ass Jets. That’s an image that’ll stick to the inside of my brain for a while. That and Ass Browns.
- Xopher
  
  And Ass Saints sounds best of all! (Though I must say, Ass Giants does make me think.)
  - Felton
    
    Ass Steelers?
Brett Myers

You have to admit, out of context, that is a very sensual looking hug. The hand on the back of the head, the hand on the breast, the hips thrust together, groins touching..

/just saying
Anonymous

Best part is the kicker (Pat McAfee) used to ride my school bus! So pleased to see him as part of the happy couple.
unklstuart

You might not want to call them gay to their face.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  You might not want to call them gay to their face.
  
  That’s not the part that I was aimed at anyway.
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  “You might not want to call them gay to their face.” Why not?
  - unklstuart
    
    I took this post as the idea that the reason this picture is funny or ironic stems from the consensus that American football is a very masculine sport played by violent people with probably a lower then normal percentage of gay players. From my experience, unless you are good friends, even jokingly calling these guys gay to their face might not be healthy for you. There are people like that. Might is a keyword too. They might not care. I assumed people would know what I meant. Of course, I try to be a nice guy and am also a skinny dude that breaks easily.
    
    I am also honored to have a post commented on by 2 BoingBoingers!
- Xopher
  
  Well, except the guy to the right whose name that is.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    In related news, Homophobic news site changes athlete Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual.
Keith

A bit on the nose, don’t you think?
Anonymous

Ha… I’ve been calling Super Bowl Sunday “National Homoeroticism Day” for years now!
Xopher

You know, it’s really wrong to tar all football players as homophobic. For example, Saints Linebacker Scott Fujita is outspokenly pro-Gay Rights and Pro-Choice as well.

As for the photo, I don’t find it funny, particularly. I DO find it SEXY.
- Anonymous
  
  @Xopher: Thanks for the info. Worthwhile.
Grey Devil

Irony, I love thee so.
mellon

Hm, I didn’t think it was funny – I thought it was sweet.
gene

Really dude? I mean, c’mon. For one thing, too easy. Second, still?
- mdh
  
  Sometimes the low hanging fruit is the ripest.
Loraan

Right … because any physical contact between two men must mean they’re gay. And it’s funny to point that out in this case, because being gay is shameful, but since know these guys aren’t REALLY gay, it’s just funny to call them gay. You know, kind of like it’s okay to call Obama black because he’s light-skinned, wealthy, and speaks with a rich-white dialect.

*eye roll*
- Anonymous
  
  Geeez, laugh much?
- Cowicide
  
  fap fap fap fap
- Anonymous
  
  “And it’s funny to point that out in this case, because being gay is shameful, but since know these guys aren’t REALLY gay, it’s just funny to call them gay.”
  
  Except for those who *are* gay.
  
  “You know, kind of like it’s okay to call Obama black because he’s light-skinned, wealthy, and speaks with a rich-white dialect.”
  
  Wow, that makes no sense at all. I’m glad I’m not USAmerican–I wouldn’t want to see everything through the hazy prism of race.
- johnofjack
  
  Little uptight, aren’t you? I’m queer and I thought it was hilarious.
- Anonymous
  
  It’s not because them touching makes them gay. It was just the way everything fell together in the picture that made it funny. Geez. No one is specifically calling them gay. Open your mind a little.
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  Sorry your team lost yesterday, Loraan. :(
Xopher

The huggers are apparently Pat McAfee (#1) and Matt Stover (#3). The Saints guy to the right is Randall Gay. (Wow, Randy Gay. It doesn’t get any better than that.) (Except that apparently he goes by ‘Blue’ rather than Randy. Oh well. ‘Blue Gay’ isn’t bad either, especially if you know a little Russian.)

Maybe you all knew those things. But I’m not a football fan and I’ve never heard of any of these people before.
- Avram / Moderator
  
  Xopher, actually, the most sexualized name in big-league sports can be found in baseball: Randy “The Big Unit” Johnson.
- Anonymous
  
  Drat, if he went with Blue instead of his family name it would have been hilarious.
Anonymous

This will only stop being funny when an openly gay player is accepted by the NFL and its fans. Until then it is hilarious because of the context of their outrageously homoerotic behaviour in the face of their even more outrageous homophobia.
gpeare

Anonymous #8: openly gay (former) NFL player Esera Tuaolo. And a ukulele player, ftw! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esera_Tuaolo
- Anonymous
  
  Did you read the part about his book and fight against homophobia in the NFL? Only proves my point
TuesdayWeld

It’s interesting that people on the outside of this sport automatically classify male physical contact that doesn’t include hitting each other as “gay”. Football players don’t seem to have a problem with these practices – you see things like this all the time, including swats on the behind.

It’s not a football issue, it’s an issue for homophobes who wouldn’t want a man within ten feet of them, much less touching them. Maybe football players are more evolved than non-sports players in the sense that congratulatory physicality isn’t seen as “gay”, it’s seen as merely a way to give a “pat on the back” for good performance. Look to your own homophobic propensities and try to get the f*** past them, don’t assume them of others.
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  Right on, TuesdayWeld! I’m sure you, like me, are waiting for the rest of the world to adopt the terrific Arabic custom of men holding hands in public.
  
  I’m also waiting for Mancrunch commercials to be allowed during the Superbowl. Until then, I’ll keep enjoying the Best Superbowl Photo Ever.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Interestingly, if you watch American silent films, you see men hugging and holding hands all the time, presumably reflecting real life behavior. The gay panic thing seems to have erupted in the 1920s or later.
    - Avram / Moderator
      
      The gay panic thing seems to have erupted in the 1920s or later.
      
      The 1920s actually saw an increase in acceptance of homosexuality, at least in big cities, though there was a bit of a backlash as well. See Wikipedia: Roaring Twenties, Pansy Craze. The Wikipedia article credits this to Prohibition, but Europe apparently had a blossoming of gay tolerance as well in the 20th century’s first couple of decades. Then fascism and the war washed it away.
      
      I sometimes worry that we’re going to see that bit of history repeat itself.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah right, football players are more evolved on the issue of homophobia and male contact – you are completely backwards on this one. Football players actively engage in homoerotic behaviour in the face of overwhelming homophobia which is what makes it all the funnier. I won’t go so far as to say that their propensity for gay bashing is a reaction to their own self-loathing but until I see football players actively accepting openly gay players…well, it just makes it hard to think that they are somehow ‘more evolved’ on this issue and not self-hating closeted gays
frogmarch

Meh, I thought this SuperB owl photo was better:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/07/close-the-box-walk-a.html
purefog

To provide a thoughtful context for this photo, I give you:
http://trueslant.com/markdery/2010/02/09/jocko-homo-how-gay-is-the-superbowl/
Antinous / Moderator

I, for one, welcome our new lace-up crotch overlords.
Brainspore

Ever notice that most NFL teams sound hilariously gay if you add “ass” to the name? Think about it: Ass Oilers, Ass Raiders, Ass Cowboys, Ass Chargers, Ass Packers…
- jackie31337
  
  “Ass Ravens” just doesn’t have much of a ring to it. Neither does “Ass Colts”, for that matter. Some days it sucks to be from Baltimore.
- Anonymous
  
  @Brainspore- thanks for taking this post where it was trying to go the whole time- to The Land of Awesome.
wygit

Skipping the whole “If men hug they must be teh gay” silliness,
THESE were the best photos from the Superbowl

http://bit.ly/9TU3cF
http://bit.ly/aU2b6x
http://bit.ly/dhbg2z
http://bit.ly/aTWLdU

(ok, on the first point, if you think you can only hug someone you would like to boink, you have a problem.)
- Anonymous
  
  @wygit: Yes, adorable.
  
  You might be trying to pitch them to the wrong crowd, though. I might be wrong, but I guess that the BB readership leans more strongly than average toward the view that the Superthingy is a ridiculous, overhyped, overblown Circus Maximus.
Anonymous

The public on field behaviour is the minor tip of the iceberg, football culture from high school up to the NFL includes a great deal of homoerotic behaviour most of which takes place off the field and is similar to frat hazing. NFL players are smart enough and/or controlled enough to not publicly demean gays (too much) or assault them physically but the environment is very unfriendly to gays – only three players have ever come out and then only in retirement. At the college and high school levels you see plenty of verbal and physical abuse being more or less sanctioned.

As the pinnacle of football culture the NFL has a responsibility for what it fosters in the ranks of its aspiring members – they need to take the lead in making homophobic behaviour unacceptable in football.