If you’ve had the misfortune of watching a Kansas City Chiefs game this season, you’re well aware that the broadcast is less about football and more about auto-tune pop star Taylor Swift.
Not a minute goes by that cameras aren’t showing Swift in the high-priced luxury suite or announcers aren’t mentioning her for some reason unrelated to football.
Swift has become the show. Not the Chiefs. Not superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes. And not even her boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
It’s Taylor Swift hour every time the Chiefs take the field and many NFL fans are tired of it. Current and former players are also tired of it, including retired New York Giants great Tiki Barber.
“(Isiah Pacheco) scores a touchdown, and they pan immediately to Taylor Swift! Again? It’s not even Travis Kelce,” Barber said on Monday during WFAN’s afternoon drive show. “Maybe it’s the Taylor Swift influence that has made me — I don’t want to say turn sour — but just be slightly annoyed with the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s also because they’re always here. After you’ve been somewhere for so long and have had the success they’ve had, it becomes inevitable.”
That would be fine if it were simply about the Chiefs but it’s not. And it’s not the Chiefs that most people are annoyed with — it’s Swift and the networks’ obsession with her.
“Why are you guys continuing to show Taylor Swift? The obsession is getting annoying,” Barber said. “Why do we need to see her?”
On Sunday, everyone outside of Kansas City will be rooting for Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens to put an end to this sideshow. If they don’t, the Super Bowl — the holiest of football Sundays — will be taken over by Swift madness and that just can not be allowed to happen.
