Bass: How has Taylor Swift disrupted the Super Bowl?

Sports fan behavior researcher Rick Grieve and I are trying to grasp the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce controversy.

“I have heard rumblings from some sport fans that the focus on Taylor Swift ‘detracts’ from the game in some manner,” Grieve wrote in response to my email. “I am not certain where this comes from.”

Grieve, a Western Kentucky University psychology professor, said fans usually like to list the celebrities among them. He mentioned Spike Lee’s New York Knicks, Jack Nicholson’s Los Angeles Lakers, Eminem’s Detroit Lions. But not Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs.

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“It might be that she is not seen as a ‘true fan’ because she attends to watch her boyfriend play and, at times, that is seen as not being truly attached to the team,” Grieve wrote. “So, maybe, they think she is not legitimately at the game and rooting for the Chiefs.”

The greatest sideshow to Super Bowl LVIII, apparently, is arguing the legitimacy of Taylor Swift.

In so many ways.

Everything Swift does is scrutinized

Taylor Swift grew up 60 miles from Philadelphia. Her 2020 song “Gold Rush” mentions “my Eagles T-shirt.” Did she mean the team or the band? All things Swift are debated, and she finally settled this one. Last May, back in Philadelphia for her Eras tour, she acknowledged that she loves the band ... “but, guys, like, c’mon, like, I’m from Philly, of course it’s the team.”

Which brought huge cheers from the crowd at Lincoln Financial Field, the NFL team’s home. Fly Eagles Fly!

Four months later, she showed up at a Kansas City game in Chiefs colors, sitting in a box beside Travis’ mom. The Swift-Kelce rumors were beyond rumors now, it seemed. The news was explosive enough. Switching allegiances? A travesty. How dare she fly away!

The gatekeepers insist the only true fan is a fan for life, but they don’t agree on all the rules or exceptions. If Swift is trying to support her significant other, is that OK? If Kelce were her spouse, would that be all right? What if she (gulp) supports two teams? What if she had to pick? She avoided that one. She had to skip the Eagles-Chiefs game in Philly to make up a postponed Rio de Janeiro show.

Kansas City lost that the game, part of a slide that took the Chiefs from 6-1 to 9-6. A championship run appeared to be breaking up. Let’s blame Taylor Ono.

“Feels like it's about time,” FS1’s Skip Bayless posted on X (ex-Twitter), “to call Taylor Swift a distraction.”

“If you're going to blame her for their losses,” @spillthev replied, “I'm assuming you're also giving her all the credit for their wins too, considering she's been present for more wins than losses?”

After the Chiefs beat the Bengals to clinch another division title, Swift did get credit, but for another reason. The NFL must have rigged the outcome, some in Bengal Land concluded, to ensure another Chiefs Super Bowl run, this time with Tay-Tay and her Swifties.

Somehow, this kept coming back to her.

Is Taylor Swift bigger than the NFL?

Taylor Swift is not a typical celebrity fan. Taylor Swift is not typical. Forbes ranks her as the world’s fifth-most-powerful woman. She is worth more than $1 billion. She has 250 million Instagram followers. The NFL has 29.4 million. Travis Kelce has 5.8 million.

This could never be the typical celebrity-player crossover relationship. Swift dating Kelce is more like Barbra Streisand with Andre Agassi, Mariah Carey with Derek Jeter, Madonna with Dennis Rodman, Posh Spice with David Beckham, even Marilyn Monroe with just-retired Joe DiMaggio. In today’s social media landscape, the fascination and speculation were bound to be seismic.

And there was bound to be backlash against a powerful woman by those who still believe football is a game played by men for men – even though the NFL said a few years ago that 47 percent of its fans were women.

Is this misogyny?

“I think the short answer is yes; misogyny is at work here,” Grieve wrote. “At least that is what it feels like to me. Or some form of fragile male ego stuff going on. . . . It does feel like some people see Taylor Swift as a threat to the masculinity of football, when . . . there is a large minority of female fans.”

Not everyone knows those numbers. And not everyone who complains about Swift coverage is being sexist.

What if the distraction and detraction are more about perception?

Swift's screen time is actually minimal

CBS showed Taylor four times for a combined 32 seconds during the AFC Championship Game, and not at all in the second half, according to the New York Times.

The game lasted 3 hours and 9 minutes.

Since Christmas, 32 seconds was her second-highest in-game airtime. The most: 76 seconds in the playoff win over Miami. The least: 12 seconds in the Bengals game.

All this, of course, excludes the hugs and kisses after the AFC title game and the social media reactions.

Football is a weekly game sandwiched between analysis and opinion, plenty of time to assess a team and its intriguing new fan. The broadcast itself is a TV show, with gaps to fill, sometimes with fan reaction. The bigger the game, the bigger the show. Today, we have a Manningcast. Fifty years ago, we had Howard Cosell interviewing former Beatle John Lennon during Monday Night Football. Six years later, we heard Cosell inform us on MNF that Lennon had been killed.

The Super Bowl is an amplification system, a two-week pregame buildup to feed those who want to dissect everything from the 49ers-Chiefs matchup to the Swift-Kelce match. It is Jim McMahon mooning a helicopter. It is wacky questions at Media Day. It is NFL fans and Taylor Swift fans, sometimes airing their grievances, sometimes sounding a lot like each other.

Swift fans are not unlike NFL fans

There are gatekeepers among the Swifties, too. Some insist a real Swift fan must have been there from the start.

If you feel special for being there from the beginning, it is understandable. If you feel this makes you superior, and you put down others, are you serving Swift or yourself?

We as sports fans relate to our team and share a sense of community with each other. Our team and its lore are part of our identity. Swifties can be that way, too.

They have listened to Swift’s lyrics and her messages. They have a strong connection with each other and her evolution. They buy her music and merchandise. They wear friendship bracelets. They watch when they can, listen when they can’t. Maybe they grew up with her. She was 16 when she released her first album. She is 34 now. Now they might have kids who are Swifties, too.

Sports fans cannot control what happens in a game, only what they buy. Swift fans cannot control how many awards she gets – she just won Album of the Year a record fourth time – but they can control sales of her music.

What if both fan bases can help each other?

What if Swift and the Swifties are not a distraction or detraction, or part of a plot, but an added attraction?

What is Swift conspiracy and what is theory?

Read what you will into all the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce developments. Or integrate them into your Super Bowl prop bets. Will Kelce propose? Will Swift make it on time from Tokyo? (The Japanese embassy to the U.S. said she would.) Will she endorse Joe Biden for president?

What is conspiracy and what is theory?

What is fact and what is interpretation?

What serves you and what distracts you?

Did the Democrats stage a relationship between Kelce (who does vaccination ads) and Swift (an LGBTQ+ rights advocate)? Or do the couple’s beliefs help explain the attraction? Would it be natural or fraud if Swift endorses Biden again? Did the Republicans stage Aaron Rodgers’ anti-vaccination stand? What if this is what he believes?

Did agents and marketers stage Swift-Kelsie to build both of their brands? Did the NFL make sure Swift-Kelsie made the Super Bowl to build the league’s brand? Or was all this just a gift of circumstances worth appreciating?

Here is what we know. Swift had a massive impact on the NFL broadcasts. Viewership skyrocketed for Chiefs games, producing record AFC title game ratings. The NFL is attracting newer and younger fans, particularly younger women fans, and what if that connection grows?

“I kind of like the idea of her attending games and having millions of followers who have never paid attention to football viewing the game,” Grieve wrote. “I am certain the NFL loves having the new eyes.”

Grieve has worked with Cody Havard and others on studies  comparing fans of sports to fans of other subjects (but not music) and sees the benefits of stream crossing.

“In fact, being a fan of more than one area provides some protection against outgroup derogation,” he wrote, “as the overlapping fandoms provide areas of connection rather than division.”

Instead of taking any fandom too personally, you can escape to another. It can be healthy. And fun.

I never listened to Taylor Swift’s music until recently. Now I am curious how her music will continue to evolve. If I tire of the attention on her at the Super Bowl, I can borrow the strategy I use now when I keep seeing the same old Kelce or Patrick Mahomes commercials:

Look away.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Bass: How has Taylor Swift disrupted the Super Bowl?