Smells like preteen spirit
No need for bad blood, Swift’s power to draw new, young fans good for NFL
IAM entering my third season coaching my daughter’s travel softball team. For 2 ½ years, the girls on my team — now mostly 10-year olds — could not have cared less about my job or talking to me about football. They left that for their fathers.
Then, something changed over the past six months. Suddenly, I was coaching a team that had a lot of Chiefs fans.
Call it the Taylor Swift Effect.
If you are a parent of a young girl you can probably relate that your daughter is suddenly into watching football … or at least one team, the Chiefs.
If you did not experience Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour last summer, you at least read about the craze it was causing. On the heels of that, we discovered Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was dating Swift and she began popping up at his games in September.
That is when I noticed a change in the girls on my team. We had a practice the day after the Chiefs beat the Jets on “Sunday Night Football” in September. At the end of practice, I told the girls that Coach Brian was in the same building as Taylor Swift the night before.
They began screaming and asking questions about how close I got to her, what she looked like and then Piper, a pint-sized second baseman/outfielder hit me with, “What did she smell like?” I explained to Piper that if Coach Brian tried to smell Swift, Coach Brian would be in jail right now.
This has continued at home with my daughter, Alexa, who now asks what time the Chiefs are playing and wants to watch the games with me.
As any parent knows, if your child wants to spend time with you after they hit a certain age, it is a gift. Alexa and the other girls may not be interested in Steve Spagnuolo’s blitz package. They certainly have never heard of Len Dawson or Christian Okoye. But it doesn’t matter if your daughter now wants to watch a little football with you just to catch a glimpse of Swift in her luxury suite cheering on Kelce.
This is my counterargument to those of you who have tired of the networks showing Swift every few minutes during their broadcasts or argue that she is somehow ruining the NFL. Does it really take away from the games to see Swift sitting in the luxury suite? Not if you have a daughter at home who wants to watch the game.
I’m not sure Swift is creating lifelong Chiefs fans. I suspect if she and Kelce break up, there will be new phase that these girls move on to (I’m told the breakup album will be epic). But, for now, she has brought new viewers to the NFL and maybe they will stick with it. Who can complain about that? It is a demographic not known for loving football either.
For most of us, there is a reason we fell in love with football and our favorite team, and don’t pretend it was their offensive scheme that appealed to you when you were 7 or 8 years old. It may have been the lightning bolt on the Chargers helmet, the black and gold of the Steelers uniform or something you saw on NFL Films. Think of Swift as an extension of that, a reason to become a fan for these young girls.
Our softball team does winter workouts on Sunday nights in January and February. During the divisional round, I heard from a few parents who said their daughters wanted to stay home to watch Chiefs-Bills to catch a glimpse of Swift. On Sunday, the Chiefs game ended about an hour before our workout started. When I walked in, Leela, our power-hitting third baseman could not wait to let me know the Chiefs won the game.
A little while later, the girls were inging Swift songs and debating whether they wanted the Chiefs to face the 49ers or the Lions. When I old the team that I would be in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, a few players asked me to get them an auograph or a picture.
Piper, of course, asked me to try
find out how Swift smells. If I nd up in a Vegas jail, you’ll know what happened.