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Anyone who knows a thing about football knows that the Super Bowl focuses purely on the game, without any cultural or commercial distractions.
Wait a minute.
The truth is that football has never been just about football, at least not for decades, and especially not at the Super Bowl. Football fans are frequently inundated with ads, performances, and celebrity sightings — with some game action sandwiched in between. This is nothing new.
So the idea that musical superstar Taylor Swift is somehow “ruining football,” a perspective voiced by a fan in Baltimore last week and echoed frequently on social media, has us perplexed. What is wrong with a successful woman showing up to support her similarly successful boyfriend, and having fun doing so? For those seemingly incensed and lashing out, the backlash begs the question, why you gotta be so mean?
Taylor Swift doesn’t impact the integrity of football any more than sprawling halftime shows, non-stop beer commercials or the adorable puppy bowl. If anything, she is helping to grow the game by engaging new fans — especially young women — who otherwise might not tune in at all.
While Swift likely has no trouble shaking off the bad blood from the people who are somehow exasperated by her repeated, but brief, jumbotron appearances at boyfriend Travis Kelce’s games as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs, the reaction surely is noticed by her fans and other football fans (two groups with increasing overlap). Robert People, a father and author in Florida, explained this impact well in a recent TikTok video.
“Those of you people out there, especially grown men, expressing all this nasty, ridiculous hate for Taylor Swift just for existing and supporting her boyfriend in the NFL, keep in mind, Taylor Swift’s not gonna see or hear any of that,” People said, as reported by TODAY. “But you know who will? Your daughters.”
For all the silly conspiracy theory noise speculating about the validity of Swift and Kelce’s relationship, it is this impact on young women that really matters.
“And with all this juvenile hate you’re showing Taylor Swift for simply being there, you’re encouraging your daughters to shrink themselves, reduce who they are,” People continued. “Because if they do anything more than that, if they just decide to be themselves, they’re gonna get a whole lot of hate from not only the world but from people just like you: their own parents. We need to do better, straight up.”
More important than the question of whether Taylor Swift is good for football — and she is, just ask Chris Berman from ESPN — is this consideration about the message being sent to young women when there is backlash against Swift simply for being a supportive and engaged partner. You don’t need to know much about football to know that this sort of hostility should be out of bounds.