Behavior: Football as Erotic Ritual

Are the guys on the gridiron really gay?

A quarterback receives the ball from between the center's legs. After a successful play, teammates sometimes hug or slap each other on the bottom. The possible homosexual implications of these and other football rituals have long been noted by professional and amateur behavioralists alike. But none have studied the subject more closely than Alan Dundes, an anthropologist at the University of California in Berkeley. In his view, fanny patting and centering the ball are only the tip of the gay iceberg. Writing in Western Folklore, Dundes says that the "unequivocal sexual symbolism of the game" makes it clear that football is a homosexual ceremony.

Dundes calls the consistency of the imagery "nothing short of amazing." He notes that uniforms are sexual—enlarged head and shoulders, narrow waist and skintight pants accented by a molded codpiece. The jargon too is erotic: "score," "down," "piling on" (gang rape), "popping" an opponent (overtones of defloration) and "sacking" the quarterback (plunder and rape). Players try to knock opponents down, putting them in the "supine, feminine position." Indeed, says Dundes, "football is a ritualized form of homosexual rape. The winners feminize the losers by getting into their end zone."

To Dundes, the three-point stance of football players is a form of sexual presentation derived from the animal world. Just as apes raise their bottoms and present their genitals as a sign of submission to stronger males, linemen present their bottoms to their more prestigious teammates in the backfield. "Spiking" the ball after a touchdown, says the anthropologist, "confirms to all assembled that the enemy's end zone has been penetrated."

Is football some kind of mass men's room solicitation of the national psyche? Not at all, says Dundes. It is merely a sanctioned form of theater where players and fans can safely discharge their homoerotic impulses. Coaches who ask players to refrain from sex before a game intuitively understand that football is a temporary substitute for heterosexuality, just as "football widows" understand that their husbands are "dead to them sexually" while football is on TV. "Football is a healthy outlet for male-to-male affections," says Dundes, "just as spin the bottle and post office are healthy outlets for adolescent heterosexual needs."

Dundes' theory has received scattered support. Says San Francisco Psychologist Jane Jacobs: "I think Dundes' ideas are very profound. My hunch is that it's right on." Former Running Back Dave Kopay, author of The David Kopay Story and now a gay militant, agrees that if homosexuality is not overt on the football field, "it sure as hell is covert."