Do men really want to date their female friends?

I was having a discussion with my boyfriend about how men view their female friends and he told me that men look for all the same quality in a girlfriend as they do in their female friends. He said that if any of his female friends had asked him out when he was single, he would have said yes, and he says that most, if not all, men feel the same way. I was floored when he told me this until I thought about it for a moment and realized that many of my good male friends would go out with me if I asked them. (This isn’t arrogance on my part, I have discussed this very same subject with many of them). Is this true of other men?