This blog was, and to some extent still is, spurred on by Swifties discovering Colin Cowherd because of his Taylor Swift take. In sports media, there is a pretty well-established hierarchy of who is liked. All sports commentators have a good take once or twice a month; if you talk for four hours a day, at some point you’re going to get something right. Colin Cowherd ranks near the bottom of the hierarchy, there with Skip Bayless, a man who’s stuck taking TRT so his live-in hostage can film him shirtlessly trashing jerseys. Colin Cowherd is the Matthew Morrison of sports media (I watch Glee for the plot).
Seeing Colin Cowherd sexualized on Twitter made me incredibly uncomfortable, after years of seeing his comment section filled with grown men insulting every facet of his physical being. I’ll get this out the way early – I feel no ire for this Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce-NFL convergence. If anything, I am incredibly fascinated by the entire situation. There is something cool about the cultural convergence playing before our eyes, which I legitimately cannot think of happening before.
Cowherd, had an excellent point. It is kind of pathetic to direct this anger toward Taylor Swift and the hordes of Swifties who now have succumbed to the beauty of NFL Redzone. They now understand why every time Jim Nantz appears on screen I swoon (“Hello Friends” is like a verbal swaddling). “I want more people under the tent,” is an incredible line. But, the way to react to Colin is like this:
And so this blog is less a pointing finger, or cultural criticism. I think it’s more of a commentary, a note, an explanation on why we are at this impasse. I don’t know if Taylor Swift is going to be at the Super Bowl, because of the Japan shows (hopefully she’ll receive helpful Tokyo Dome notes from President Tanahasihi), but this really feels like a week of cultural mashups.
I’m fully aware that I tend to write like Jalen Hurts in this meme:
And that’s what this blog is going to be. A weird conglomeration of multiple thoughts, taped together in a Rube-Goldbergian manner. So bear with me before extending judgement.
Dynasties
The dirtiest word in sports is dynasty. Except if your team is that dynasty. Then it’s the best thing to ever happen in your life. I know. I’m currently in the midst of a (probably falling) dynasty, and I have watched another team I love tire a hugging man to defeat a dynasty. The greatest crime any player can commit is being great. Sure, you can be on camera hitting a woman in an elevator, but have you seen Mahomes being great? Absolutely irredeemable.
I start the blog this way, only because I’ve run into some commentary online (which I know is not real; Twitter and Tik Tok are not real life) tying the hate of the Chiefs and the want of them to lose to dislike of Taylor Swift. Don’t get me wrong, there are some guys on Twitter with pfp’s in their truck with Oakley’s who absolutely are rooting against the Chiefs because of the 25 seconds of Taylor Swift coverage per Chiefs game. The reason a mass of America wants the Chiefs to lose is because we are so incredibly tired of the Chiefs winning. Are they an amazing team packaged together by a coach finally getting his flowers after being scorned by other teams? Yes. Is it infuriating to almost guarantee the Chiefs in the Super Bowl for the past 6 years? Also yes.
If you’re new to the NFL and think the Chiefs hate is overwhelming, let me introduce you to the New England Patriots. Even this year, when the Patriots are about as easy to watch and understand as a guy who beheaded his father (I have many questions about some things he was saying, namely the bounties), scores of football fans are wishing upon their downfall. Again, the downfall is already occurring. Apparently almost two decades of football dominance leave a PTSD-like mental scar on the minds of sports fans. Because dynasties are awful. Like the four years in a row we got of Warriors-Cavaliers finals (except I enjoyed the vindication of LeBron).
The Chief have become the embodiment of the “you either die a hero, or live king enough to see yourself become the villain” mantra.
The thing is, there is legitimately no one arguing that the Chiefs aren’t a good team. No one is arguing Patrick Mahomes isn’t on track to be in the greatest of all time conversation (we waited until the late 2010s to even allow Tom Brady fully into the conversation, Mahomes has to wait too). Travis Kelce is either the first of second best tight end of all time (I lean toward second because Gronk was in the trenches blocking Ray Lewis and taking ACL-killing shots; Travis blocks in-game as much as I block in any Chiefs game).
It’s just, people are incredibly tired of the Chiefs. When Travis Kelce has taken the John Cena mantle for being a spokesperson for every company, and Patrick’s Kermit the Frog voice shills for State Farm (a multibillion dollar corporation trying to make itself seem like a mom and pop firm) it is a little tiring.
A Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl is just another nail in the coffin of a lackluster NFL season, from a fan and football perspective. Sure the 49ers are favored, but the Brock Purdy inclusion also has the every-man vibe a lot of Americans love getting behind. The Chiefs have the role of the giant, and little Brock Purdy, a man making less than some college Athletes, must be David. Or, at least, that’s the role thrust upon him by America – “save us Brock Purdy.”
At the end of the day, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs are building a dynasty that even the Patriots at their peak could not sustain. Right now there is a lot of Chiefs hate, but give it ten years. Maybe more, maybe less. The Chiefs dynasty will have died, most players will have retired, and everyone will reminisce on the days where Mahomes, Kelce, and the Chiefs became gridiron gods. And they will all exit left as Your Best American Girl plays.
They’re hated because they’re good, and the Chiefs aren’t “your team.”
Bandwagoning
There is a second dirty word in sports and thats’s bandwagoning. In high school, because I lived in Texas, if someone was a Lakers fan it was pretty easy to discern that they were also a Patriots fan. There are always fans of winning teams who are there for the wrong reasons. And everyone universally hates them. Part of being a fan is living through hard times, especially as an American sports fan where tanking is rewarded.
You’re allowed two methods for choosing a team: the team your dad supports, or the team in the city you live in during your adolescence. College teams are a little different, but after you’ve attended college you can only root for the team of the college you attended (this is more a rule I’m trying to get passed). Outside of very few case-by-case situations, these are the rules. Live outside the rules, and you will be gifted the punishment of being a bandwagon fan, and thus, a loser, grifter, dweeb, and ultimately, and lacking moral character.
And there may be someone who reads this and thinks “well that’s stupid.” But it’s really not. Loyalty, for all the folly of the world, is a steadfast human virtue that we’re really not arguing at this point. Loyalty for an unwinnable cause seems like one of those virtues Greeks wrote epics about (I’m 100 pages into Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, which I’d highly recommend). To me, and to most people, choosing a team because they win, because you like the feeling winning brings, not because you have some deeper connection to the team is just giving into the carnal desires of an unruly spirit. There’s no morality there, only unrefined hedonism. And that should be culturally punished. (See Jalen Hurts meme above).
So to the larger point, Taylor Swift chose the winning team. Now, she chose is because Travis Kelce is on said winning team. She actually just chose Travis Kelce. But, in that, the Swifties came as fans of the Chiefs (and, on a slightly smaller scale, a fan of the Eagles). If Taylor Swift had started dating Mac Jones and gone to his games, every NFL fan would’ve felt badly for her and insisted she return to Matty Healy because that’s a less destructive personal choice. She just chose the football player on the championship-winning team.
And I think that’s caused some bubbling ire toward the Swifties. “You aren’t allowed to just come pick the winning team.” And for that criticism, I actually have sympathy for. As I stated in the previous section, I’ve been living in the midst of a baseball dynasty (and a soccer one to a much, much lesser extent). If my teams never win anything again, i’m my thirst for greatness has been quenched by multiple trophies. But, there are long suffering fans who no doubt are looking at the influx of newly minted Chiefs fans, experiencing success in their first months of NFL fandom, and thinking, “you don’t get to do that.”
Again, I would imagine most Swifties don’t really care that the Chiefs are a football dynasty. They care much more that Taylor Swift is finally getting to enjoy the spotlight with a man who appreciates her and is willing to show her off (I do want some justice for Joe Alwyn because he was the right guy at the right time. Time has just passed him). There’s an incongruence of terms being lived through both sides. And that’s probably causing some ill will from fans who have had to wear paper bags on their heads for many years.
I should state, if not reiterate, this is no ones’ fault. It’s just a misunderstanding from NFL fans as to why the influx of new fans has focused on a singular. And, like I said, most Swifties are not the middle school boys who become Chiefs fans because they want to support the best team. They’re fans of Taylor Swift who are genuinely happy to see her happy. They’re not guilty of the deadly sin of bandwagoning. It just appears that way, which feeds the anger narrative.
And Taylor Swift
So all that leads us here – to the Taylor Swift phenomenon. Listen, I like some Taylor Swift stuff, but I am one of those people who thinks her best albums are Evermore and Folklore (I will give a shoutout to 1989). I’m more of a Phoebe Bridgers guy myself, and I have binged The Last Dinner Party’s album. This is kind of to free myself from any allegations of disliking Taylor Swift. There was a time in my life that a Delicate remix was my 5:50 am hype up song after dry scooping a dangerous amount of pre-workout while debating why it’s necessary to have vaguely muscular legs (it’s because I’m short and if my upper body gets too big I look like a roided up oompa lompa).
I have no evidence of this, but I think a lot of the Swift hate is more reactionary to the media and less a reaction to Taylor Swift. The thing with media big wigs, when they see a cash cow, they are going to build a golden statue to it. The reason the NFL and its social media became infected with the Taylor Swift imaging and references is not because of Taylor, it is because Roger Goodell (Satan) and the rest of the football industrial complex sees money. And that has cosmically clashed with the Chiefs dynasty, full of bandwagon fans, all drawing the ire of NFL fans, pretentious beings they are.
It’s really quite dumb. I can understand anger directed toward the fact that Taylor Swift and the Swifties get to see more success in one season than a lot of fanbases have seen in this century (something something touch grass then). And sure, that may be annoying, but that’s putting a sports fan context on a very not sports fan interest kindling. For all the hate pro wrestling gets, NFL fans – and sports fans in general – need to understand the WWE understands that sports includes entertainment. The NFL is always awash in storylines and side characters, and every main player has a host of storylines they’ve been involved in since they step foot on a football field. Sports can’t be just purely an athletic competition with nothing else; it is entertainment. That’s why we all spend Sundays glued to the television and then go talk and text all our friends. Hell, some of us even start a sports blog.
I had a paragraph that coincided with Cowherd’s discussion about the Swift phenomena creating closer relationships. Truthfully I think there is a discussion on the consequentialist understanding we’ve given the merging of interests. I was going to say something about this interest not stemming from a place of closeness or desire to share interests. But at the same time, there are a lot of men who just genuinely show no interest in the hobbies and interests of their wives and daughters. I kept this in because I think this is set up for a wider discussion about the utilitarian nature of relationships, but this isn’t the place. (Jalen Hurts meme).
In about 6 months I expect the Taylor Swift subreddit to be discussing the positives and drawbacks of a 3-3-5 nickel formation. And I fully expect there to be multiple office and family fantasy leagues after scouring Pro Football Reference and compiling Excel spreadsheets of completed air yards per completion. This note is not to bring some sort of moral judgement – like Cowherd saying this is a good thing. That’s for a different blog, and this is merely a note written between Saturday and Sunday.
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Insightful piece