Is "Friday Night Lights" About to Give Us a Gay Football Player?

SPOILER WARNING! This archive post discusses major plot points for the Friday Nights Lights episode "Kingdom" which airs this Friday at 8:00pm EST on NBC.

East Dillon Lions wide receiver Luke Cafferty (Matt Lauria) welcomes
 Hastings Ruckle (Grey Damon) to the team.

Count me as one of those tiresome folks who's always going on about what an amazing television show Friday Night Lights is. The little drama about the coach and players of a small town Texas high school football team feels almost like a documentary, with its intimate, hand-held camerawork and seemingly improvised scenes. And you wouldn't think it would be so riveting given the subject matter (High school football? Really?), but it is indeed riveting.

Anyway, if you've never seen it I recommend renting the first season on DVD – watch a couple episodes and you'll be hooked.

The main problem with Friday Night Lights has never been quality, but rather it's sort of hard for audiences to find the damn thing. Right now Season 5 is airing exclusively on Direct TV Channel 101. Just like last year, the show will eventually re-air on NBC, but it will probably go virtually unmarketed and unnoticed in the doldrums of summer.

While I'm personally all for promoting the series, we don't get much opportunity to write about it here on AfterElton.com because it's not exactly typical fare for GLBT viewers. We're all about gay representation, and there's not a lot of "gay visibility" in small town Texas. Friday Night Lights fairly accurately reflects that.

But even so, over the years the series has surprised audiences with a few quiet gay reveals: First Devin, a closeted lesbian student shows up, and then Stan the assistant coach is briefly spotted in a gay bar by the coach's daughter. (Later, he pretends he wasn't there.) Both of these minor plots showed some heart. The assistant coach is even still on the show, his secret kept by the coach's daughter.

Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) (left) doesn't know his deeply closeted
assistant coach Stan (Russell DeGrazier) is into guys.

Who knows how the coach and his straight high school football players would react if they knew someone in their midst was gay. Or most shocking, if one of their teammates was gay. Yes, that would make a truly interesting storyline for Friday Night Lights to explore. At the least it would generate some welcome buzz for the show.   

In what is reportedly the show's final season – it might just be the Hail Mary pass.

Next page Early Season Five Friday Night Lights Spoilers and Rampant Conjecture.