Gay.com Column: "Friday Night Lights": Turning up the man-on-man heat

If frat houses are homoerotic, imagine how much more so football clubs are. Frat brothers only live together; football players practically sweat on each other. Why else would the locker room be the symbol du jour of raging man-on-man action?

So when you take a football club and make it one of 24/7 horny teenagers, you'd expect a little between-brothers experimenting, right? Sadly, for a season and a third, "Friday Night Lights" has steadfastly denied us that plotline.

That doesn't mean, though, that the past three episodes haven't given me cause for hope.

First there was that melt-my-screen hot scene from three weeks ago, between Jason Street, Lyla Garrity, and the ever-smoldering Tim Riggins. Lyla kisses wheelchair-bound Jason, then floats over into Riggins's arms, then kisses Riggins while Jason watches them, smiling. It was such a "Y Tu Mama Tambien" moment that I actually physically shivered, sure that the next scene would be the three of them slow-dancing their way onto a bed. It wasn't, but I like to think that's what happened anyway.

And there was the episode two weeks ago, when star player Smash Williams invited Riggins over for dinner. It was purely platonic, Smash's pretext for some football talk with Riggins, but the exchange put a smile on my face nonetheless. When Riggins replied: "Are you asking me on a date, Williams?", my instinctive reaction was "SAY YES, DUMBASS". If you don't understand this reaction, I direct you to any Riggins-centric scene; actor Taylor Kitsch could have sexual chemistry with a rock.

But if the Jason-Lyla-Riggins threesome was eyebrow-raising only by implication, and if the Smash-Riggins encounter was purely my wishful thinking, last Friday's locker room scene was explicit on its own terms.

As Lyla and bad-ass bad-girl Tyra Collette busted into the locker room, you could clearly see the half-naked guys horsing around. It lasted only fleeting moments, of course, before the guys behaved themselves in the presence of women, but that's what the 'rewind' button was invented for. And, in any case, that was peanuts compared to the later mass dance.

Guided by Lyla and Tyra's ingenious choreography, the Dillon Panthers put on a performance for the annual 'Pantherama'. Said performance included the stripping of clothes, the stripping of pants, and a whoooollle lotta boxers-only male bodies inches from each other. To give you an idea of how inneundo-laden all of it was, this was my straight friend's comment: "How many rehearsals did they have, again?"

Indeed. So there you have it: three episodes, three scenes of varying homoeroticism. It may not ultimately lead to anything, but we can always have hope, yes?

And in the meantime, there's always that 'rewind' button.

Catch the boys - all right, and girls - of "Friday Night Lights" on Fridays, on NBC at 9 pm / 8 pm central.