Reply #12: I think the excitement just overcomes the body-fear culture has instilled in them.

[jobycom]

We're taught so much to fear bodily contact, to think of it all as sexual unless it's a formal, torso-only hug, or a gentle pat on the shoulder or hand. Emotionally, we crave contact, but prudes have trained us to think that all contact could lead to sex, and therefore must be avoided or sanitized, unless of course we are trying for sex. So we are afraid to touch people we aren't sexually attracted to, and even people we are attracted to if we don't have some sexual invitation to do so. Even the responses in this thread interpret that as sexual, joking that it's homoerotic. We've lost that natural human expression because of religious emotional repression.

In the passion of a game, emotion overcomes our conditioning. People grab, pat, hug, whatever. It's not sexual (well, it might be for some, but in general). They act natural.

That's my theory, anyway. Probably wrong. I usually am.