Taylor Swift, left, gets a kiss from Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, right, as they arrive to watch the U.S. Open tennis championships in Sept., 2024, in New York.Frank Franklin II/The Associated Press
Back in the go-go aughties, Derek Jeter was the aspirational example of sporting romance.
A committed bachelor, the New York Yankees shortstop was constantly photographed with a rotation of models and actresses.
The tabloids claimed that Jeter sent everyone home in the morning with a gift basket, including a signed ball. One special friend made news when she said she’d gotten the same basket twice.
A decade after he retired, Jeter denied that particular story – “never happened” – but by then he was old and settled. He wasn’t inclined to push back on it when he was young and happening. Because at the time, “international playboy” was a great reputation to have. Now, I can think of few things that are worse.
This sense that our cultural mores are being driven back in time by our techno-dissatisfaction was reinforced this week by Taylor Swift and the NFL.
On Wednesday, Swift announced that she is getting married to football. The specific football player is beside the point. America’s favourite entertainer and America’s favourite entertainment are merging.
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When Swift arrived, football didn’t need help, but it wasn’t averse to it. Football had become like stock-car racing – getting killed by it was something you had to accept in order to do it.
A certain kind of person is going to be attracted to that work, and it’s not a guy who likes a quiet night at home. Football had always been synonymous with a goatish view of youth. The addition of mortal peril supercharged that impression.
Everybody used to love this idea that athletes were out there taking full advantage of their celebrity.
Years ago, I recall an official from a Toronto sports team announcing to us that so-and-so would miss that night’s game because of the birth of a child. Didn’t he just have a kid a few months ago, someone asked.
To which the official said, “Getting one stripper pregnant is fine, but two seems careless.”
Everyone laughed.
Nowadays, you wouldn’t make that joke. You wouldn’t even ask. The new Victorianism is upon us. Do as you always have, but for the love of God, don’t talk about it.
Football gets that. It gets everything about America. That’s its magic. It is able to take soundings from the wider culture and then reflect whatever’s about to happen back at its audience in a way they find comforting or thrilling.
When they wanted blood, the NFL gave them that. When they wanted empathy, it switched up. Nobody cares more about a cracked skull than an NFL broadcaster. He’s seen a million of them.
When America wanted revolutionary cosplay, the NFL leapt into the breach. Then, almost immediately, it gave them aggressive patriotism as the antidote.
Maybe this producer-consumer mind-meld is a function of a business that is almost entirely American. Foreigners are theoretically welcome, but you don’t see many, do you? Football’s diversity of thought runs north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
When people wanted football to be a documentary version of The Rock in Ballers, it did that. Now, in Trump’s America, button-downs are back in fashion. So football is ready to turn on its head.
This isn’t something it could have done alone, but as seems to often happen to very successful businesses, the solution thought of itself.
Swift entered the stage and hedonism immediately went out of style. Now it’s all-girl gangs in the press box and holding hands on the walk from the bus. That dating idyll ran for two years, ratcheting up the suspense.
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Now Swift has decided it’s time for America to take a turn to family values. When JD Vance says it, people want to burn down his house. When she says it, they go, “Awwww.”
As she put it, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
Think back to when you went to school – which of those two was the smart one?
Swift is calling the shots here, but credit to the NFL. It has the sense to let the person who has the greatest modern understanding of spectacle take the wheel.
This will be the biggest story of this year, and then the next year, and then whatever year they decide they want kids. For as long as it’s intact, this is America’s First Family. Once it isn’t, divorce will be back in vogue.
The genius of this union is its Odd Coupledom. She’s a little left. He’s a little right. They don’t say that, but we’re all meant to understand it. They don’t agree on everything, but they manage to make it work. In a country where everyone fears and despises the other side, Swift and Travis Kelce represent the bridge between cultures.
Everyone who thinks America must eventually deal with the outside world in some substantive way is wrong. They can be just as happy doing domestic international relations. Swift/Kelce shows that détente is possible. Blue and red, coming together, for love. And maybe a little cross-promotion.
A thought experiment: What if Swift had fallen for a hockey player instead of a football player? What effect would that have had on the NHL?
“None” is my guess. The teams would have lined up to push back on any reporting about it, on privacy grounds. The league would have done its best to kill the biggest marketing coup that had ever been dropped in its lap.
But the National Football League is too American to have such scruples. Everything is in service to the show. And you have to admit that, whether or not you claim to like it, it’s a show you can’t avoid knowing about.
The NFL season starts Thursday with the Cowboys at the Eagles. Cowboys by a field goal.
A diamond expert based in London said on Wednesday that the choice and cut of diamond that American footballer, Travis Kelce, decided on for his engagement to pop star Taylor Swift is estimated “to cost at least half a million pounds, between $650,000 – $700,000.”
Reuters