Top 7 Acceptable Man Crushes

The man crush is often used as a teasingly thing to say to someone who has an unhealthy obsession with one of the members of your circle of friends.  They may constantly talk about them, tell stories about them that aren’t really worth re-telling, and just generally have an 8th grade-level “he’s so cool!” vibe about the person.  It was popularized in the Seinfeld where George is in love with Dan Cortese, and taken to the extreme with relationships like Daniel/Miagi and Rocky/Apollo.  In certain cases, it is totally acceptable to have man crushes on people.  The following seven members of the sports world definitely fit the bill, and some people even happily pride themselves on showing them incredible amounts of man love.  Current athletes only were considered, so no Michael Jordan.

7. John Cena

OK, so you may be wondering how a professional wrestler is socially acceptable to have a man crush on as the very first entry.  I’m kind of wondering the same thing, but “socially acceptable” is used as it would be in San Francisco for the benefit of this list.  Go to a state fair and you’ll probably see 30% of people wearing John Cena gear, including a whopping 78% of those under  12 years old.  Cena is huge.  He’s no Stone Cold though—at the DuQuoin State Fair in Illinois back in the late 90s, I’m pretty sure it was  a state law that one must be wearing a Stone Cold skull shirt to gain admission to see Firehouse or whomever was playing that night.  Hence, man crushes.  You can still call it that even if most who have said crushes are not even teenagers.

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6.  Justin Timberlake

J.T. has entered a new realm for man crushes.  He has so many people with plutonic grown man love for him that he crosses over into the sports man crush world.  It makes sense though, it’s not like every single person that e-mailed you the link to D*** in a Box or Mother Lover wasn’t in one of your fantasy sports leagues.  And Timberlake played a basketball player in a movie once.  J.T. may be the single biggest man crush in the country right now.  It’s like when Barack Obama shows up on the biggest celebrities list or Oprah is on the most powerful people list—sometimes one’s influence is so strong that they can cross over.

5. LeBron James

So people are still talking about him not shaking hands with the Magic and not talking to the media after the game.  You can definitely chalk that one into the “things that are amplified by a factor of 2,000 because of the Internet and 24-hour sports talk.”  When Isiah Thomas and the Pistons lost to Jordan’s Bulls, they not only didn’t shake hands, but they left before the game even ended.  Had that happened now, it may crash the Internet like the day those Lindsay Lohan pictures showed up.  Probably the first case of everyone rushing to the Internet to check something had to be the day that the Monica Lewinsky report went online back in 1999.  Things for ye Internet really took off then.

4. Barack Obama

Not to get too political, but he is fast becoming the most polarizing figure of the 21st century.  He has millions of man crush followers (like someone who re-told the story of him making the three-pointer in front of the troops so there is your sports tie-in), and millions of…whatever the complete opposite of man crush is.  Is there a word for that?

3. Tiger Woods

The man crushes on Woods are more of an awe thing that loving him because of what he does for your favorite team.  To drive the ball that far, to win tournaments almost every time you play in them, to have nearly a billion freaking dollars from hitting a tiny ball with a stick, and having an insanely hot wife, it’s almost mandatory to simply have a man crush on him out of respect.

2. Tom Brady

The forgotten man crush, if he comes out throwing darts and seven touchdowns a game again this season, it won’t take him long to regain his spot—he was probably tops on the man crush list for several years before last year.  But now there is a new king.

1. Albert Pujols

In the past six months, I have had two stories that sum up what Albert Pujols means: an 85-year old man told me that Pujols may be better than Stan Musial.  This was a “get off my lawn!,” “everything was better in the 50s” 85-year old too.  I also had one of the biggest Cub fan/Cardinal hater/can’t praise anything about the Cards at all guys that I have ever met say that Pujols is a “hell of a player.”  When you corner the market on old-school 85-year olds and Cardinal haters, you have truly accomplished something.  It becomes no wonder why the love of Albert Pujols can give strangers a bond quicker than a discussion of how to defeat Bald Bull.  And I’m proud to call myself a member of the Pujols Man Crush Foundation.

The Top 7 is written by Jason Major. He’s not only a Pujols Man Crush Foundation member, he’s also the chairman. Email him at [e-mail].

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