Kansas City Chiefs fans hold giant cutouts of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce (Photo by Scott … [+]
The Kansas City Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl and conspiracy theories continue to abound across social media that the NFL scripted this matchup.
In the last two playoffs games, Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, came alive after a mediocre second half of the season. In the Chiefs 17-10 win against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday that catapulted Kansas City into the Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers, Kelce caught 11 passes for 116 yards and a touchdown.
The post game celebration couldn’t have been scripted any better with Kelce being interviewed on national TV celebrating the victory and the cameras cutting to an applauding Swift, cheering him on from her box. Later, the media covered Swift and Kelce kissing on the field.
The NFL could not be more elated and executives may be rubbing their hands together for the largest audience in Super Bowl history in large part because the biggest superstar in the world, Swift, has a rooting interest in the outcome. Her Swifties will be watching in full force.
The big question now is whether Swift will make it to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas on Sunday, Feb. 11, after her concert on Saturday, Feb. 10, in Tokyo. Maybe, following her concert, she’ll board her private jet and make it back to the United States in plenty of time for the opening kick off; Japan is one day ahead of the U.S. so she will be traveling back in time.
This scenario ties into the long-running theory that the NFL is scripted, that all of these miraculous catches and last-second kicks are part of some grand design. One outlet pointed out that a Canadian TV station posted the future a few weeks ago:
“Reba McEntire, Usher, and Post Malone are slated to perform at San Francisco 49ers & Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl match-up on February 11.”
Since this came well before the Conference Championship Games, which decide the Super Bowl participants, the premature report brought on charges that the NFL was somehow distributing its script to a few select outlets.
However, this year, we’ve seen an abundance of theories, beginning with the attention Swift brought to the NFL as the media showcased her relationship with Kelce.
Some people went so far as to accuse the NFL of orchestrating the relationship in order to increase viewership and grow its audience among young female fans. Not to mention, Kelce jerseys are selling at an exponential rate — up 400% since Swift’s first game-day appearance. Ticket sales for Chiefs games, both home and away, skyrocketed.
But this was just the beginning of the conspiracy theories. There have been charges that the NFL is creating a loosely scripted reality show, much like WWE, as long as the games end in the agreed upon outcome. In one Conference Championship pre-game conspiracy theory, the NFL wanted Swift’s Chiefs and Eminem’s Detroit Lions to meet in the Super Bowl to heighten interest even more. Of course, this theory fell apart with the Lion’s loss to the 49ers.
Then, of course, there is the betting lines on NFL games and the referee crews assigned to each game. The Detroit Free Press expressed concern over the officiating crew assigned to the NFC Championship. Could the officiating crews helping carry out the script?.
As someone that has been around the inner workings of sports leagues for years, I can tell you unequivocally that these conspiracy theories are utter nonsense. The reason that they have received so much attention is that the special interest groups promoting them have a disproportionate share of voice in the algorithms of social media, which promote click bait content. And the conspiracies give people something else about the NFL to debate.
The sports leagues have absolutely no incentive whatsoever to do anything to diminish or destroy the integrity of the game. Such integrity is the very foundation upon which fandom and credibility is based. While these conspiracy may be fun to fantasize about and they make great conversation, let’s just accept them for what they are—another angle to create even more interest and hype around the NFL and its games.
