The history of sport is filled with bloopers and blunders, mistakes that still make us shake our heads in disbelief. In 1919, the Red Sox (you knew I was going to start there) sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. In 1968, NBC switched from a 32-29 Jets versus Oakland game to an airing of the classic film Heidi, meaning viewers missed the final minute of play, in which Oakland scored twice to win by 10.
In 2006 — and this one hurts because I was there to witness it — snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, so far ahead there wasn’t a competitor in sight, threw some flair on the second-to-last jump, wiping out and losing gold to Swiss boarder Tanja Frieden.
But all of these pales in comparison to far right politicos going after Taylor Swift for sitting in Travis Kelce’s box at a Chiefs game. Stepping to Taylor is without question the biggest, dumbest, blunder in sport history.
These folks need to calm down.
Rumors about Travis and Taylor, including in my house, which contains a devout Swiftie (is there any other kind?), have swirled since July, when Travis admitted that he tried to get her his phone number via a friendship bracelet when she played Arrowhead Stadium. Flash forward to this past Sunday: as play-by-play commentators slyly inserted her lyrics into their calls, Taylor sat in Kelce’s box with his mom, dressed in merchandise that is now, oh yes, not so easy to get — sales of Kelce’s “87” went up some 400% after Taylor’s appearance — and then leaving with Kelce in his, as he put it with a wink and a nod to his brother in their podcast, “getaway car.”
It should be too obvious to understand that Taylor Swift is a force to be reckoned with on every level. Her Eras tour contributed somewhere between -- are you ready for it? -- $5 and $10 billion to the global economy. To put it in football terms? In the U.S., each of the stops on her tour — 53 total concerts in 20 different cities — basically had the impact of a Super Bowl.
So now, whether it’s women gleefully triggering male partners (thank you Tik Tok) by saying that Taylor was going to help put Travis “on the map,” fans of women’s sports loving their front row seats to a woman overshadowing NFL action — “it’s nice that she visits her stadiums in the offseason,” one of my students quipped to me — or Glennon Doyle offering Taylor advice on how to make sense of the game, there is something for everyone in this romantic tale.
Everyone, it seems, except conservative political pundits, who are at the ready to attack her music, her songwriting, and now her choice of a Sunday night date. Kelce, of course, has been in conservative crosshairs for a while. In 2017, the Chiefs’ star tight end was one of many who knelt on the gridiron in response to former president Donald Trump’s recommendation that owners fire any player who takes a knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. He’s got a brand partnership with Budweiser, a company now shunned by conservatives for its ad featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. And — most recently — he has appeared in promos for Pfizer, encouraging us all to get COVID boosters and flu shots.
No worries, Travis — I have my appointment for both.
As for Miss Americana herself, she broke her political silence years ago, condemning Trump’s presidency, condemning Marsha Blackburn, and putting her substantial influence behind driving voter registration. She registers tens of thousands of people to vote any time she so much as mentions the ballot box. Just last week, on National Voter Registration Day, her single Instagram post drove Vote.org to register over 38,000 new voters — a 25% increase over their totals last year, and over a 100% leap in 18-year-olds. Crossing Taylor and her fans, as the likes of Megyn Kelly and company have done, is just not a savvy political move.
We will have to wait and see what the impact of what some are calling the “Swifty Sway” will bring in the next election, just as we have no idea if Travis and Taylor will provide us with a marry-me-Juliet moment. But political pundits should take note: it has never ended well for anyone who did Taylor wrong. Just ask Jake Gyllenhaal.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville College. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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