Taylor Swift Isn’t The Problem. Cameramen Are.
She’s Katherine Webb on steroids.
I’m talking about Taylor Swift.
And if you have no idea who Katherine Webb is, you weren’t watching the national championship college football game between Notre Dame and Alabama in 2013 when it seemed that after every play the cameras swung to the comely girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron.
Webb was the reigning Miss Alabama USA at the time. She and A.J. were the “It” couple.
Yet many football fans - including me - were annoyed by the time wasted showing a cheering Webb when all we cared about was the beat-down of Notre Dame on the field.
it was so unusual that newspapers were full of stories about the unprecedented interest in a girlfriend.
On Tuesday morning, commentary on the broadcast of the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Alabama and Notre Dame included words like “creepy,” “awkward,” “uncomfortable” and “heteronormative.”
The subject was not Alabama’s 42-14 victory, but comments made during the game by the ESPN play-by-play announcer Brent Musburger regarding the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A J McCarron. In the first quarter, ESPN showed McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who was sitting near his parents. Musburger called the 23-year-old Webb, a former Miss Alabama USA, a “lovely lady” and “beautiful,” and said to his broadcast partner, Kirk Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Ohio State, “You quarterbacks get all the good-looking women.”
“A J’s doing some things right,” Herbstreit replied. Musburger, 73, then said, “If you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with Pop…”
It’s extraordinarily inappropriate to focus on an individual’s looks,” said Sue Carter, a professor of journalism at Michigan State. “In this instance, the appearance of the quarterback’s girlfriend had no bearing on the outcome of the game. It’s a major personal violation, and it’s so retrograde that it’s embarrassing. I think there’s a generational issue, but it’s incumbent on people practicing in these eras to keep up and this is not a norm.”.
The thing casual football watchers don’t understand is that those of us who love the game are not interested in shots of the celebrities, parents of players or girlfriends dancing around in skyboxes.
Football season is short. We want to drink in every moment. When there’s a break in the action, we want replays.
Yet a narrative has exploded in the left-wing media in the past several days claiming MAGA hates Tay Tay.
Football fans tend to be conservative and lots of us complained for months about the amount of attention showered on Swift every time the Kansas City Chiefs play. I guess when your presidential candidate is barely alive you’re so desperate, you’ll accuse your opponents of hating on the biggest pop star in the world because of her politics. But her leanings had NOTHING to do with it.
To be fair, Trump seems to have taken the bait, (he hasn’t forgotten that Taylor endorsed Biden in 2020).
But most of the groans I heard over the unrelenting coverage of the pop star from Pennsylvania came from football fans who wanted more gridiron, less Taylor.
I recently got a message from one of my besties: I am curious why you are so anti-Taylor Swift. She certainly has made me more of a football fan!”
I believe she was reacting to a Tweet I posted when the Chiefs and Bills played in Buffalo.
Here’s the thing. I’m fine with Taylor Swift. I like her. She cute, super-talented and not a skank like so many female performers. My granddaughter is crazy for her.
But since she hooked up with the best tight end in the NFL, the hunky Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, NFL football has turned into a platform for the pop star.
I am an avid football fan. Every time I watch a game I learn something. And I find lingering shots of celebrities, families and girlfriends a distraction.
Most of us who are griping about Taylor Swift don’t care about her politics.
We just want our football back.