I've been an NFL guy since I was 8 years old. I just love the game. In my book, it's the most entertaining sport, the rivalries among fan bases are magnificent, and along with NCAA basketball, it boasts the greatest postseason tournament to watch.
That's not to suggest I don't have any qualms with the league. I don't love everything about every player, or every decision they make off the field. I don't love everything about every owner, or the way they bilk the fans for every dime they've got. I don't love the exorbitant salaries and relentless contract disputes, the over-officiating, or the way they handle overtime. Nor do I love the politics and activism that has seemed to worm its way into the league in recent years.
And then there's this: I could not possibly care less that Kansas City's star tight end Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift. I don't have any ill feelings towards either of the two of them, but having 17 television cutaways to Swift cheering from the suite-seats? It gets old.
Yet, believe it or not, there's something that is far worse than the Taylor Swift/NFL merger. It's the journalists reporting on it. Having to endure sports journalists (a group notoriously overrun with left-wing malcontents) not writing about the game, but instead penning essays on what Swift's midwestern whiteness should tell us about the NFL's race problem, is mind-numbing. But like a trainwreck, I can't manage to look away.
Commenting on the latest example of this stomach-turning spectacle, Richard Hanania put it best:
The article that he references, "The NFL Wishes It Could Be Taylor Swift: Tall, Attractive, Safe and White" was - and I don't say this lightly - one of the most worthless pieces of manufactured outrage I've read in a long time. Given that it was published by the Huffington Post, perhaps no one should expect otherwise, but it was a textbook demonstration of "provocative desperation" - someone not writing to inform, inspire, or intrigue, but instead writing something intellectually vapid yet provocative simply in the hopes that it will gain traction.
First of all, the author of the piece, Stephen A. Crockett, Jr., exhibited far too much knowledge and expertise over all things Taylor Swift than any self-respecting sportswriter should. And the embellished, strenuous efforts to creatively insult the millionaire performer weren't a good look either:
If she were a movie, she'd be a campy teen love story. If she were food, she'd be a carrot: a vegetable just sweet enough to trick your taste buds into not wanting cake. If she were clothing, she'd be capri pants: short enough not to be pants but long enough not to be shorts.
And if Crockett were a journalist, he'd be…oh, never mind. Maybe the audience of the Huffington Post regards this cringeworthy prose as interesting writing. I'm not among that number, nor do I care for the ham-fisted attempt to inject racism and regionalism into this story, but to each his own.
She's tall and conventionally attractive, and embodies the Midwestern "aww-shuck-isms" normally reserved for folks that have never been to the big city. She's the American girl white America loves, and so does the NFL…
What Swift has captured is the elusive middle America. You know, the middle America that doesn't exist but politicians still speak about ― the kind of places that still have milkmen and paper boys who ride bikes, the elusive white-dream-America where small towns still make car parts, and the NFL was made up of burly white men who worked twice as hard to overcome their physical shortcomings…
[If] the NFL is an overwhelmingly Black sport supported by Blacks and Latinos, then why does the NFL keep trying to push Taylor Swift down our collective throats?
Good heavens, who thinks like this? How miserable of an existence must it be to not find yourself capable of enjoying a football game without writing a 1,000-word dissertation on the racial implications of the current pop darling dating the current star jock? Just watch the game or don't. Listen to her music or don't.
Instead, Crockett continued driving towards his ultimately elusive "point" before eventually concluding,
While no one will admit it, the owners would love to go back to a time where the NFL was largely a white man's game. Which is why Taylor Swift is so alluring. She embodies, whether on purpose or not, the ability to harness her whiteness like a superpower.
Call me crazy, but had the term racism not been neutered by years of misuse and misapplication, such an offensive and legitimately libelous accusation would land Crockett in serious trouble. Coaches aren't promoting the Swift hysteria. Front offices aren't either. That's the media's decision, and despite Crockett over-analyzing the issue to the point of absurdity, it's really not tough at all to figure out why they're doing it.
It has nothing to do with whiteness or blackness or midwestern "aw-shucksism." They're promoting it because Swift is insanely popular and they think doing so will translate to more eyeballs watching. The only ones who don't seem to get that are these guys like Crockett still looking to be promoted from sports to serious journalism.
I understand the ambition, but please guys, for the love of the game just give it a rest.
