Taylor Swift and the NFL

Really? 

This ongoing negative reaction to Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Travis Kelce enjoying each other's company is the best real-time entertainment I've had in months.

She's a singer, for Pete's sake, and he's an NFL football player for the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs. So what?

But I think I know why this is happening. 

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift in a private moment.

The first instance of blowback came early, I believe, and it came mostly from NFL fans about 13 or 14 games ago when it first became publicly clear that the power couple were dating. If Swift was in the stadium's VIP suite to watch Kelce play, any of the networks covering the game would cut to the glass booth to show us a few seconds of Swift jumping up and down like a high school cheerleader, especially whenever Kelce scored a touchdown. It's the kind of intrusion that television does best.

The thing is, this happened game after game where Swift showed up to support Kelce. It was, perhaps, getting a little tiresome. Predictable even. So what?

The New York Times did an analysis recently that showed Swift, on average, appeared for 25 seconds in each of those three-and-a-half hour broadcasts. OMG. Saturation.

Swift is an international singing star of gigantic proportions. If she wins the Grammy tonight for Album of the Year ("Midnights"), it'll be her fourth trophy in that category. Nobody, and I mean nobody – not Elvis, not The Beatles, not anybody – has ever won four times. She already has 12 Grammys overall, as well as 40 American Music Awards (the latter the most ever by an artist).

And yet, I read where one exhausted NFL/music fan wrote "she is what's wrong with music today."

Ummm, OK. Sure. 

I'm trying to figure out what it is that is so wrong. Swift is clearly a role model for young women, as her packed concerts can attest, giving many young girls a sense of empowerment and direction (she recently encouraged 35,000 of her fans to register to vote). As far as I know, she is not a drug user. I've never seen, heard or read where's she's gotten drunk. Although I am not a person who would purchase her music (I'm still lost in the 1960s), her lyrics are clear to the ear and her melodies, while sometimes repetitive to me, are still catchy.

At 34, she is also a shrewd business woman. She re-recorded her first six albums to reclaim ownership of those songs when she lost the copyright to those masters. Now she has copyright ownership over the new master recordings.

And she's a billionaire.

Is that what's wrong with music today?

The story took a crazy turn after the Chiefs defeated the Baltimore Ravens 17-10 in the American Football Conference title game last Sunday, sending them to the Super Bowl next week against the San Francisco 49ers.

MAGA world, doing what it does best when nothing else works for them, instantly cried "rigged" and "conspiracy" because now Swift will show up at the Super Bowl, the Chiefs will beat the 49ers,  and then Swift and Kelce together will announce their endorsement of Joe Biden over Mafia Don for president during the postgame celebration. It's clear as day.

Kelce's good with this because he's a spokesman for Pfizer and taking the Covid vaccine.

I can't see the NFL orchestrating any bit of this, but I'd bet my last bean dip chip that it's enjoying the free publicity of a megastar in its VIP suites, possibly creating even more football fans to its product.

Maybe even enough to replace the football fans who promised to give up watching the NFL after Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee during the National Anthem years ago.

These boycotts never work out well.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think I might be pulling for the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, even though I'm still mad at them for beating the Eagles last year. And I hope Swift brings home another boatload of Grammys tonight, just because.

Really.