LA Times columnist Dan Neil on Mancrunch controversy: “…Football itself is, well, kind of gay.”

Los Angeles Times Pultizer Prize winning columnist Dan Neil may be leaving the paper for the Wall Street Journal but this week, he wrote a column about the Super Bowl ad controversies and a part of it really made me laugh.

I gotta share a few excerpts:

I realize that what I’m about to say may ruin my chances of getting into Canton. But American football strikes me as a pretty homoerotic spectacle, beginning with the hypertrophic masculinity of the male form in tight pants and huge shoulder pads and ending with the most undignified gesture in all of sports, the hands-between-the-cheeks snap of the ball. Hike, indeed.

The pats on the fanny, the showering together, the endlessly rolling around in the dirt. All things considered, I think figure skating is more butch.

The most subversive part of the Mancrunch.com ad is not its open acknowledgment of gay life, or even its portrayal of two guys kissing — and kissing for comic effect, much like the Snickers Super Bowl ad of two years ago that caused a flap. No, the ad’s real transgression is to imply that football-loving straight men, the sort who high-five after touchdowns, might under the right circumstances act out sexually with another man.

You have to wonder what sort of marvelously awkward silences on Super Sunday the ad might have provoked before the tension was broken.

“Want another beer?” “Yeah, dog . . .” (while thinking, as his friend walks to the fridge, “That Jimmy, he’s sure got a nice butt. . . .”).

These ads are definitely not brought to you by the NFL.

Once again, here is the ad: