As the Kansas City Chiefs get ready to play in their fourth Super Bowl in five years, a topic of conversation people can’t stay away from is Taylor Swift’s connection to the team, as she’s been a fixture at games for the last couple months now that she is dating star tight end Travis Kelce.
Swift has been in the suite with the Kelce family and Mahomes family for every playoff game during the Chiefs run to the Super Bowl, and her presence has caused people to lose their minds. There have been some wild conspiracy theories about Swift’s relationship with Kelce, and while not everyone dips into “she’s a psyop” territory, there is an odd number of people that think she’s ruined the NFL viewing experience.
What makes it particularly strange is those folks talk about Swift more than just about anyone else (non-Swifties who track her every move, aside). Swift gets less than a minute of on-camera time on average during the broadcasts of those games across three-plus hours, as now that she’s just a staple at games (rather than early on when it was big news she was even at an NFL game), she really only gets shown after Kelce makes a big play or scores.
The NFL is more than happy to have her presence as she certainly opens the league up to a new audience, but the conversation about her has jumped the shark in certain circles. This week on his CNN show “King Charles,” Charles Barkley became the latest commentator to take a shot at the Swift backlash, saying those that think she’s ruined football are “a loser or a jackass.”
"If you’re screaming at Taylor Swift saying she ruined [football], you’re just a loser. You’re just a loser or a jackass." – Charles Barkley pic.twitter.com/fhah8fjCjz
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 1, 2024
Bob Costas, who joined Barkley and Gayle King for the conversation, points out after that it’s a particularly ridiculous argument because the Super Bowl has always been about more than just the game. It’s a spectacle because of everything going on around what’s happening on the field, with the halftime show and commercials. While the NFL is certainly happy with Swift’s presence because she does open up the game to an even wider audience, that’s no different than any of the other ways they’ve tried to tie the sport to pop culture over the past few decades — this one is just more natural and came as a freebie for the league.
