When Did Football Get So Gay?

The Wall Street Journal published an article today about college football's preseason "conditioning photos," which feature about 40 or so extremely buff, shirtless teenagers drizzled in baby oil and feeling sexy. How did we not know about this before?

Our brother-site, Deadspin, has been all up on this for a while now, but we'd never heard about it before today. According to the WSJ, the tradition has been around for years—beefy football players strip down to their uniform pants or briefs and pose together with varying, ridiculous props. These include (but are by no means limited to) chains, hard hats, shoulder pads, and in one especially homoerotic case, a $120,000 orange Lamborghini. All the while, the coaches encourage this as a way to motivate players in their preseason training.

Tennessee's late strength coach John Stucky, who ran the program from 1994 to 2002 and mentored some 30 strength coaches working now at schools across the country, found it to be a great way to motivate college-aged men, his colleagues say (only players who met certain goals got spots). The school's star alums agree. Colts quarterback Peyton Manning says that when he played for Tennessee in the mid '90s, a spot in the front row was a "pride thing," and he and his teammates would arrive to the weight room as early as they could on photo day to do enough lifts and push-ups to make their muscles bulge. "There was a lot of baby oil involved," recalls Mr. Manning. "It helps with muscle definition."

Sure, that all sounds pretty *cough*gay*cough*, whoa, excuse us. We think we're coming down with something. Aren't summer colds just the worst? As we were saying, we think that all sounds pretty reasonable. What other reason would a middle-aged man have to encourage young, nubile boys to strip down and oil themselves up for a group photo session?

· I'm Ready for My Beefcake Photo, Coach (online.wsj.com)