The New York Jets were my first introduction to professional football, too, so believe me when I say I understand what many Taylor Swift fans went through Sunday night.
My dad bought season tickets in 1997, Bill Parcells’ first season, when tickets were cheap. The Jets won just one game last season under head coach Rich Kotite, who never got another NFL job. My dad’s second cousin was one of those diehard Jets fans who joked (and sometimes didn’t joke) about wearing paper bags over their heads in the stands, and he knew a lot of people who sold ticket.
By the time I got to middle school, I was playing three sports: tennis in the fall, basketball in the winter and softball in the spring. But I’m not a Jets fan yet. My relationship with sports changed fundamentally when I got into football.
I started going to games with my dad during the 2001 season, and together we experienced the end of the Vinny Testaverde era. He bought me a Chad Pennington jersey after he took over, and I wore it to school — mostly to annoy my friends who were Eagles fans, but also because I wanted to be a part of the fandom. I can speak a language that most 13-year-old girls can’t.
There’s no inherent exception when it comes to sports, although some fans behaved as they did when millions of Swifties tuned in to something they’d probably never seen before: a Jets-Chiefs game. There is no good reason why many people regard football fandom as something you have to prove in order to watch the games. So, let’s stop doing that. We must welcome those who are new to football and may have felt intimidated entering the arena before.
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When Taylor Swift showed up at the Chiefs game, the Fox TV crew had a challenge
I thought hard about my entry point into football fandom this weekend, as I heard NBC’s Mike Tirico open the “Sunday Night Football” broadcast by welcoming the Swifties. I thought about it again when I saw Ari Meirov, an NFL commentator with a large social media presencemock the NFL for changing its Twitter/X bio to Taylor Swift lyrics and Sports Illustrated media critic Jimmy Traina it’s clear to say that “legitimate NFL fans” hated a broadcast that included cutaways of Swift and her famous friends enjoying the Jets-Chiefs game. Traina wrote that she can’t believe NBC decided to cater to more casual sports fans who want to see “Taylor Swift jump around and make faces in the suite.”
Many people made similar jokes, assuming Swift knew nothing about football. Ah, yes, the woman who famous Eagles fan it is not possible to know what is happening in the game. He’s just jumping up and down because someone told him something good happened, right? Surely these people know the level of Swift’s fandom — because of course it’s kind of a test. He can’t enjoy an Isiah Pacheco touchdown because it was a great run and helped the Chiefs take the lead. Because he was actually watching the game the whole time, interested and engaged.
Every female sports fan has questioned her fandom. This is the exam. Every woman reading this knows what I’m talking about. You’re at a sports bar trying to watch a game, and a guy comes up to you and asks you to prove your sports knowledge on the spot. Name the backup center for the Jets. Name the Pats co-defensive coordinator. Name seven players from the 1948 New York Yankees. It doesn’t end well, because the only way the quiz ends is when you, the girl, get pissed off and leave the sports bar to watch the game at home in peace.
The NFL spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to reach potential new audiences. The league puts annual games in Europe in an attempt to attract international fans. It broadcast the game in an animated “Toy Story” set just this weekend and made alternate Nickelodeon broadcasts in an attempt to reach kids. No one is making fun of those efforts, by the way. Swifties who may never have watched an NFL game but now tune in to Kansas City Chiefs games to catch a glimpse (or 10) of Swift and her maybe-boyfriend are just one potential new audience.
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Every single football fan has an entry point to this wonderful sport. Maybe your dad got you a football for your crib and signed you up for pee wee football as soon as possible. Maybe, instead, your dad just asked one day if you wanted to tailgate in a parking lot and sit in the nosebleeds of section 310 at the old Giants Stadium.
And maybe that parking lot is where you first learned to throw a football, which isn’t that hard since you’ve been playing softball for a while. And maybe the nosebleed seats have become a community of mostly grumpy Long Islanders who have had tickets for decades and always assume the worst when it comes to the Jets. And maybe that experience led to you asking your dad if you could watch “Monday Night Football.” And all day games on a Sunday.
Maybe even drag your dad to a local sports bar just so you can watch all the games at once. Since you both love Peyton Manning and don’t always catch Indianapolis Colts games, he’ll say yes.
Even if Swifties don’t tune in to Sunday night just for football, maybe it’s the entry point they need to our favorite pastime. Let’s not make an American sport more accessible, interesting and entertaining to people who for whatever reason never gave the sport a chance.
Viewership among girls ages 12-17 was up 53 percent from the season-to-date average in the first three weeks of Sunday Night Football, according to Variety. The audience among women aged 18-24 increased by 24 percent; among women 35 and older, it rose 34 percent. What if some of them stick? What if they realized that a close game between the Chiefs and Jets sparked something inside them? What if we looked at the potential upside instead of mocking the mostly young and female fan base of a very talented pop star? The NFL chose the former, seeing the business and marketing opportunity it presented. And for those of us who love football and Swift’s catalog? It’s been a fun few weeks.
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I hope that some of these girls also fall in love with the sport that I love. I don’t like the Jets fandom among them — I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies — but I want them to feel welcomed, like I did by my dad and my cousins and those Long Islanders I hung out with every week. They taught me the rules. They taught me the importance of a good run game. They taught me a language that I will speak for the rest of my life.
“This idea that you get to judge who is or isn’t a good fan doesn’t fit the sport of football,” my father told me when I called him Monday night. “Show up, it’s important. You let them in and hope it sticks.”
That’s my hope too.
(Photo: Elsa/Getty Images)
