By Benjamin Hoffman, The New York Times
As Taylor Swiftap NFL adventure began in earnest at a Kansas City Chiefs game against the Chicago Bears on Sept. 24, the reaction of the Fox broadcast crew — and much of the NFL world in general — was summed up by Erin Andrews, a veteran sideline reporter.
“We all need to calm down,” Andrews said, shortly after Travis Kelce scored a second-half touchdown.
Andrews was making a nod to one of Swiftap songs, but she was also acknowledging how star-struck she and her colleagues were to have the world’s biggest pop star at Arrowhead Stadium to see her new love interest, Kelce, play for the Chiefs. Greg Olsen, the lead analyst on the broadcast, went as far as bragging that Swift had once liked one of his tweets.
While Swiftap presence dramatically expanded the audience for Chiefs games — Nielsen Media Research estimated an additional 2 million women watched Kansas City’s game on Oct. 1 — some backlash was inevitable. Swift joked about “pissing off a few dads, Brads and Chads” in her Time Person of the Year profile, but she had run out of one-liners (and facial expressions) by the time comedian Jo Koy, in a disastrous hosting gig at the Golden Globes, said: “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.”
Koy soon went on a media tour defending the joke as a criticism of the broadcasts, not Swift. But the reality was that the sequence at the awards ceremony took 16 seconds to play out, which was more time than CBS had dedicated to showing Swift at either of the last two Chiefs games she’d attended leading up to that night.
And that dissonance between how many times Swift is shown versus how many times people seem to think she was shown, has continued despite the reality that she is typically on screen for less than 25 seconds over the course of broadcasts that run longer than three hours, and her name is rarely mentioned.
Rob Hyland, the coordinating producer for NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcasts, has run the coverage for two games Swift attended — the New York Jets-Chiefs game Oct. 1 and the Green Bay Packers-Chiefs game Dec. 3 — and said his team prepares heavily for how they cover her, but that everything falls away if the game gets interesting.
“It is always a balance with whatap happening on the field and how you can enhance whatap happening on the field,” said Hyland, who challenged any dissatisfied viewers to name any aspect of the games they missed as a result of the cutaways. “It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, letap, letap show her this many times.’ It was, ‘Hey, when appropriate, letap remind the audience that she’s there.’”
Hyland’s crew spent the lead-up to the Jets game — which was only a week into Swift and Kelce’s public relationship — frantically trying to find out if Swift would attend, going as far as having a spotter plane searching the area for police escorts. But a close game led to most of their preparation being tossed aside in favor of game action (and at least six cutaways to Aaron Rodgers, the Jets’ injured quarterback, sitting in his own suite).
Two months later, NBC showed her only once during the broadcast of the Packers game, largely because the novelty of the relationship had begun to wear off.
A close look at the games that have aired since Christmas reveals familiar patterns of coverage that have Swiftap fans hoping to see her more while some vocal NFL fans remain overwhelmed.
Jan. 21 — Chiefs vs. Bills
Times shown: 5 | Total duration: 24 seconds
Travis’ day: 5 catches, 75 yards, 2 touchdowns
Time devoted to a shirtless Jason Kelce: 21 seconds
Score: Chiefs 27, Bills 24
After an early catch by Kelce, Swift was shown sitting in her luxury suite, and Tony Romo, the color commentator, said, “There’s an interested fan right there.” The broadcast went back to her suite after both of Kelce’s touchdown catches to see her celebrations. On the second one, Romo pointed out that Jason Kelce was sitting behind Swift, drinking a beer with no shirt on. “There’s your brother-in-law right behind you,” he said, incorrectly characterizing her relationship with Travis Kelce, just as he had during Kansas City’s game on Christmas.
Jan. 13 — Chiefs vs. Dolphins
Times shown: 5 | Total duration: 1 minute, 16 seconds
Travis’ day: 7 catches, 71 yards
Score: Chiefs 26, Dolphins 7
Swiftap jacket — a custom creation by Kristin Juszczyk — quickly became the talk of social media. As for the game, which was shown exclusively on the Peacock streaming service, the mentions of Swift were few and far between, other than an extended stretch in which the game’s commentators, Mike Tirico and Jason Garrett, discussed their proximity to her.
“So I’m not exactly sure where in the stadium Taylor Swift sits, right?” Tirico said, as the cameras showed her suite and began to pull back. “We’re just sitting here watching the game. The last quarter-and-a-half, there have been people up here, and I’m like, ‘Man, they must love Jason Garrett.’ Everybody’s pointing their camera up to our booth to take a picture of Jason. And then about 10 minutes ago I was like, ‘Hey dummy, they’re taking a picture of Taylor.’”
As the camera showed a wide shot of the booth, which was just above Swiftap suite, Garrett said, “And the worst part is, I’ve been waving the whole time.”
Dec. 31 — Chiefs vs. Bengals
Times shown: 3 | Total duration: 12 seconds
Travis’ day: 3 catches, 16 yards
Score: Chiefs 25, Bengals 17
This was a quiet day for Kelce, which led to very little mention of Swift. After a crucial defensive play by one of Kelce’s teammates late in the game, the CBS cameras showed Swift celebrating in her suite, and Romo said, “You see all the fans — and your favorite fan — all excited out here.”
Dec. 25 — Chiefs vs. Raiders
Times shown: 3 | Total duration: 14 seconds
Travis’ day: 5 catches, 44 yards
Score: Raiders 20, Chiefs 14
Swift and her entire family spent Christmas with the Chiefs, and her brother, Austin, dressed as Santa Claus. But after CBS opened its broadcast with a shot of Swift in her suite, she largely disappeared, probably because Kelce played relatively poorly in a frustrating loss. The third and final time the cameras showed Swift was after a catch by Kelce in the second quarter, prompting Romo to say: “And his wife loves it — I mean girlfriend.”
This article originally appeared in .
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