I Don’t Need Taylor Swift to Help Me Understand Football

Have you heard? Taylor Swift has been to a couple NFL games lately and she’s been spending some time with Kansas City Chiefs tight end, Travis Kelce. Even if you don’t care, you definitely heard.

I happen to care very much about two of those things: football and Taylor Swift. Well, and tangentially Travis Kelce, I suppose, because he does happen to be the best in the league at his position and is on the defending Super Bowl champion team, and he once helped my fantasy team win more than a few games. He’s not really my type, but that’s not wherein my beef lies. (Let’s save those thoughts for our group chats, shall we?)

This isn’t about these two famous people who are “still just getting to know each other” in “more of a hanging out situation than dating,” according to a source in People. No, my rage is focused on the way people are talking about it and marketing it—especially those acting as though women just discovered sports because Taylor Swift attended a football game.

Now, did a bunch of people (of varying genders and ages) tune into a game they otherwise would not have because of Taylor? They sure did. There was anecdotal evidence everywhere on social media and the ratings for Sunday night’s game averaged 27 million, with a 53% surge in viewership among teenage girls, per CNN. I’m not here to gatekeep football or Taylor Swift. But I’m also not going to let people act like women of all ages didn’t previously enjoy the sport. Taylor herself has spoken more than once about growing up watching Eagles games with her dad—and even has a lyric in the song “Gold Rush” on Evermore that references “my Eagles T-shirt hanging from the door.” She confirmed at one of her Philly shows during the Eras Tour that she did indeed mean the Philadelphia football team, and not the band—though she likes them too.

In fact, being a longtime superfan of either or both Taylor and the NFL has sometimes been fraught. I’m in my 40s and have been down with Taylor since she burst onto the scene with her first album, Taylor Swift, a.k.a. “Debut” to Swifties. It was most certainly not always cool to be a grown woman loving all things Taylor. Ask younger fans who “grew up” with her music, and they’ll tell you it wasn’t always looked highly upon for them either.

As for football, I’ve been watching it since I can remember, and my family has had season tickets to the Indianapolis Colts games since they moved to town in 1984. The NFL has not had the best track record when it comes to addressing issues of domestic violence and sexist work environments, just to name a couple of its many issues, and that has given me pause as a female fan. And made me more than willing to understand when other friends tapped out on the sport or some people gave me a side-eye about still watching. That’s totally fair.

So to see the league and so many brands try to capitalize on the cultural power of Taylor Swift (and her female fanbase) at this moment in time had me feeling a certain way. Especially because so much of the content was so patronizing, or at the very least transparently pandering.

It was as if women had discovered football (and sports in general) for the first time when Taylor attended a game.

Of course, there were a lot of angry men firing off missives about how she and her fans were ruining the game, nay, the sport of football. (Counts had NBC cutting to her 17 times during Sunday’s game. It was excessive, on that we can agree.) Perhaps one of the most vomit- and anger-inducing comments of that ilk was Big Cat of Barstool Sports (insert eye roll here) who basically said he could handle this sort of publicity if he could see a sex tape.

This is disgusting in obvious ways, but at the core of all this commentary is that somehow female football fans don’t exist—or that if we do, we must be spoken to in condescending tones and words. It’s 2023 and we’re still being this basic about sports and gender roles. I cannot. Though I’m not surprised.

We. Contain. Multitudes. And making assumptions about large swaths of the population based on heteronormative stereotypes might still be prevalent, but it’s definitely passé.

I almost threw my phone out the window when I saw this Peacock and NBC Sports Instagram post co-opting friendship bracelets, which have become a staple at Swift’s Eras Tour. (Yes, I’ve already been three times, and, yes I made and swapped bracelets. I can’t wait to do it again.) The idea was giving me big “I’m a dad with a daughter so I get it now” energy, and I was not here for it. They also sent out an email about the game where they spelled “Chiefs” as “Ch13fs”, referencing Taylor’s famously favorite number, 13.

Then NBC aired a pre-taped video just ahead of kickoff with Carson Daly “mansplaining” football to Swifties, awkwardly cramming in song titles like “Wildest Dreams” and “Blank Space.” Because again, how would our little lady brains ever understand this manly sport we just learned about last week? It was deeply insulting to all football fans. In fact, I’d imagine that even people who were tuning in simply to see Taylor could see straight through the pandering too.

The game’s commentators, Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth, couldn’t have sounded more embarrassing as they worked in Taylor Swift references that even a casual fan might find corny, let alone a true Swiftie. That’s not to mention every other sports media (and frankly, general media) outlet punning it up all over the place for the past two weeks.

I dare anyone on that production team to sing me two full lines from “Cornelia Street” or tell me when it was played as a surprise song.

As I said on social media Sunday night, “I broke my foot watching my beloved Colts lose a playoff game in January 2006 + had to have surgery. Watching tonight’s football game as a Swiftie—between two teams I don’t care about—has been more painful.”

Listen, I get how the game is played in digital and social media. I understand what trending topics are and why you want to jump on them. And Taylor Swift and the NFL are two big conversation starters in America.

But my God, the cringe. Especially as a woman who has loved sports her entire life. We don’t need to be talked down to or have the game wrapped up in song lyrics for us to like it or understand it. Many, many of us are more than aware of what a first down is or even how much the NFL’s overtime rules are lacking—and a million nuances about the game in between. And it seemed every sports-loving woman I know who was watching was losing her mind like me, as my DMs were on fire.

It seems to this woman who avidly watches the NFL week after week, that the league acknowledges its female audience mostly when it’s convenient for them, either monetarily or for PR. It’s quite ironic, seeing as even back in 2020, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was saying that 47% of NFL fans were women. They looked at the power of the Swiftie dollar, as proven over the past many months of the Eras Tour, and said, “LFG!” And that rising tide raises all ships, as it were. I’m not here to say Taylor’s business hasn’t gotten a lift too. But the NFL has certainly seen a huge short-term benefit. (Kelce’s social numbers and jersey sales are also trending way up.)

Instead of a pink jersey (we are totally cool with wearing our team’s colors!) or a shout-out to breast cancer awareness in October, we’d much rather see the blatant sexism in certain organizations called out and dealt with properly. Or you know, treating domestic violence like the serious matter it is. At the very least, we don’t want to be coddled and treated as though, because we’re women, we can never understand or enjoy the game the way men do—unless you wrap it up in Taylor Swift.

That’s patently ridiculous. Do better, everyone. Or at the very least, please settle down.

PS: See how you can write a whole entire piece about Taylor and football and not shoehorn in lyrics, even when you know them all by heart? I know you can do it too, brands and NFL!

Abby Gardner is an Indianapolis-based writer and editor and host of the pop culture newsletter “We Have Notes.”