The Friday Night Lights Star Who Almost Became Marvel's Captain America

When "Iron Man" took the worldwide box office by storm in the summer of 2008, it did so with the audacious promise of not just sequels, but the creation of an entire big-screen universe that would culminate in the superhero mash-up comic book fans had been dreaming of since they were children. Could this newfangled Marvel Cinematic Universe hook enough rank-and-file moviegoers to achieve this lofty goal?

This would all be contingent on numerous gambles breaking in the company's favor. Marvel had to team steady-handed directors with color-inside-the-lines screenwriters, who would then hope like hell that the not-quite-A-list stars they'd cast to play these heroes could turn them into billion-dollar franchise pillars.

The most well-publicized casting competition at the time centered on finding the perfect, fresh-faced up-and-coming star to take up the shield of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. I was covering this process at the time for Ain't It Cool News, and, for a while, it seemed like it was John Krasinski's role to lose. He was in it all the way up until the day the studio offered the part to Chris Evans — and it's amusing to note that fans weren't all that stoked about the former Human Torch getting a second bite at the Marvel apple. They thought Evans lacked the gravitas to play a young World War II recruit who got transformed into a supersoldier. Instead, they wanted the comparatively long-in-the-tooth likes of Mark Valley or Nathan Fillion.

Marvel was always going to cast a young actor to play Rogers, and one of the finalists was an early standout on the classic NBC/DirecTV series "Friday Night Lights" (—) and, no, it wasn't Taylor Kitsch.

During a recent appearance on "Watch What Happens Live," Scott Porter, who rose to television stardom as quadriplegic Jason Street on "Friday Night Lights," was asked about losing out on the role of Captain America. He quite candidly responded that, 15 years ago, it was a "kick in the nuts."

Other finalists for the part, aside from Krasinski, included Mike Vogel and Wilson Bethel (who is now the MCU's Bullseye), and all of these actors got far enough down the road that they did screen tests in the Cap costume. It felt very real at this point, and, for Porter, this made getting passed over a bitter pill to swallow. "That was, like, a big ... I'm bent over, sobbing, heaving. Yeah, it was bad. Because all these press outlets had put my head on Captain America's body, and I started to buy in," he explained. "I was like, 'I can do this.' Oh, no, no. 'Yeah, I can't.'"

Porter ultimately found another big success in the Netflix dramedy "Ginny & Georgia," the third season of which just premiered on June 5. To his credit, he's moved on and is a huge fan of what Evans did with the role that could've been his. "Who else can be Captain America than Chris Evans?" he said. "I was not mad at all, and I watched all the 'Avengers' movies. I'm a huge nerd, and the man just crushed it."