I’ve said this before but there are a lot of times as a viewer of sports that who we choose to cheer for makes very little sense. Last weekend the NFL played its two championship games, the outcomes deciding who would get to play in the Super Bowl, and I watched them both with very little care about the outcome of either.
The earlier game was a bit more complicated. On one hand there was the Baltimore Ravens, a team that had knocked mine out two of the last five times they had made the playoffs but that I really had ambivalent feelings toward. Other than being better than the team that I choose to root for the worst thing I could really say about them is that I think the head coach’s brother, also a head coach, seems like a dick.
On the other was the Kansas City Chiefs, their sixth Championship Game in a row. If they won it would mean their fifth Super Bowl appearance over that six year span, with two wins already. Nobody likes a dynasty when it isn’t your team. When KC first starting winning everybody liked them because they were sick of the New England Patriots always winning. This year people wanted the Ravens to win because they were sick of the Chiefs always winning. That’s just the way it works. Also, their quarterback, Patrick Mahommes, is in a bunch of commercials and his wife and brother seem kind of obnoxious. Plus, there’s something about how he walks that is weird.
We are pretty much just hoping that the people that wear a certain uniform do better than the guys wearing a different color uniform do. It’s not supposed to make sense.
I started the game hoping that the Ravens would win. I like it better when one team isn’t dominating because then it gives me greater false hope that one day my team might be in that position. Plus, the KC quarterback walks kind of weird. I do like their tight end, one of the best to ever play the game, and I kind of like his girlfriend, one of the biggest pop stars to ever walk the planet. I even took my oldest to see her in concert once, back when it cost less than a mortgage payment and the venue was smaller than the stadiums her boyfriend plays in.
As I scrolled social media during commercials and downtime it started to become apparent that many people were using this relationship as their own reason to root against the Chiefs. I’d tried to ignore it because I know that haters are going to hate, hate, hate, but the more ridiculous they became the more that my ornery nature began to take over and the more I started hoping for them to win, just because of how annoyed it would make people that seem to spend a much larger amount of their life than healthy being annoyed be further annoyed.
The truth is that she was shown three times in the first half, for a total of about 30 seconds. There is video of her telling the CBS cameramen to leave her alone and apparently they listened because I don’t remember a single shot of her until after the game when she shared a quick minute with him and then told him to go celebrate with his boys.
I can’t say that I’m a huge Swiftie and don’t think that I could drag either kid to one of her concerts right now, something that my bank account appreciates, but there is no denying that she is the biggest thing in music right now, maybe ever. The increase in female NFL viewership since she decided she was interested in football is astonishing and the streaming numbers for her music and the tickets sold not only to her tour but to the movie version of her tour are at a level that only Elvis, The Beatles and Michael Jackson could ever hope for. If you haven’t seen this, I would argue that this is the single greatest performance in the history of Saturday Night Live.
To quote her words, I was there. Listening to 16,000 pre-teens sing the lyrics to “Fifteen” brought this girl dad to tears.
That’s not why I’m going to be rooting for her boyfriend’s team in the Super Bowl, though. At least not totally. From what I can tell, he and his brother seem like pretty alright people. I’ve never listened to their podcast but it seems like people like them. She also seems like a decent human and does a lot for other people. I’m not one of those that knows anything about celebrity gossip but if these two are happy then good for them. If it makes a bunch of the snowflakes who like to call other people snowflakes upset, even better. I thought most of them had sworn off the NFL because some dude tried to find a way to peacefully protest something that he felt was a major problem in our country but if they’ve come back in the meantime, welcome. If there are a bunch of young girls watching and learning the game for the first time, welcome.
You guys are probably going to be hoping for different teams to win but honestly most of us have some pretty silly reasons for who we root for. Mine seems to be mostly be old fashioned snarkiness and the opportunity to use the word snarky.
Enjoy the game.
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.
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Image: This file is a work of an employee of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain.
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Photo credit: Wikimedia
