Unless you live under a rock, you know that Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce is rumored to be dating superstar singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. She has been seen at his last two games sitting in box seats with Kelce’s mother, Donna.
The NFL has completely taken advantage of Swift’s appearances at Chiefs games and has been posting about her on social media constantly. They even went as far as to make their banner on X, formerly known as Twitter, a culmination of pictures of her cheering at the recent games.
On Sunday alone, the NFL’s official Instagram page posted four times about Swift, which is more times than they posted about any other NFL team that played that day, excluding the Jaguars and the Falcons because they played in London.
When I tune into an NFL game, as I do multiple times a week for 25 weeks out of the year, I am not watching to see Taylor Swift in the crowd. That might actually be the last thing I am hoping to see.
Along with the posts on social media, what winds me up the most is the never-ending cuts of the camera to Swift in her box seat. According to CNN, the cameras cut to Swift an astounding 17 times during Sunday night’s game between the Chiefs and the New York Jets.
They even cut to her after Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco, whom Swift has no relationship with, ran for a long touchdown. Pacheco was in the middle of his touchdown celebration after a hard-earned 48-yard touchdown run.
Instead of letting him celebrate on national TV in his home state of New Jersey, they cut to Swift, as if she was the offensive coordinator who drew up the play.
I understand showing Swift celebrating after Kelce scores a touchdown as the two are rumored to be dating, but these random cuts to her and the countless posts on social media are just overkill.
The NFL recently changed its Instagram bio to say, “Chiefs are 2-0 as swifites.” Besides the fact that this is completely unnecessary, the NFL is also supposed to be unbiased.
Changing your bio on Instagram to a statement about a singular NFL team seems biased to me. They have since removed that from their bio.
I do understand why the NFL would try and take advantage of Swift attending games and use her for publicity as she is arguably the biggest singer on the planet.
Her influence has also been apparent in soccer lately, more specifically the race for the ‘Golden Boy’ award which is given to the most outstanding player in Europe’s top tier of soccer that is under 21 years old.
The award looked like it was headed to Barcelona’s star defender Alejandro Balde, but when he came out in an interview and said he did not like Swift’s music, Swifties flocked to the votes and swayed the vote in favor of Real Madrid’s wonder kid Jude Bellingham, who was in second place before Balde’s comment.
If I wanted to see Taylor Swift, I would pay an absurd amount of money and go see her on her The Eras Tour, not turn on NBC on a Sunday night.
I actually like Taylor Swift too. While I do not consider myself a Swiftie, you can often catch me singing along to Swift’s ‘Love Story’ in my car, but what the NFL is doing in relation to Swift is just outrageous.