Forgive me for making the most ridiculously obvious statement possible, but the internet is an absolutely wild place. It's wild for literally billions, if not trillions of reasons, but the one I'm focused on today has to do with a conspiracy theory that somehow connects Taylor Swift and Al Michaels — I'll bet you didn't have that one on your 2023 BINGO card.
So, let's start here: If you hadn't heard, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are dating, and because Swift is the most consequential music act since The Beatles, and because Travis Kelce is one of the best players in the biggest professional sports leagues in the world, this has become a very big deal. Unnecessarily big. Like the biggest pop culture story in the world, big. The NFL (smartly, by the way) began catering their broadcasts and social media approach toward this relationship, talking about the pair frequently, cutting away to Taylor Swift in a suite often, and even including Swift in their pre-game packages during games that involved the Kansas City Chiefs — a strategy to attract new, non-traditional viewers to their game. Did they go a little overboard? Perhaps. But you're talking to someone who not only appreciates Swift's musical talents, but also understands that the NFL probably gains a million new viewers each time Swift shows up at a game and has her reactions shown when Travis Kelce does anything notable.
Predictably, there was a sizable chunk of NFL fans who were outraged that the NFL was devoting so much attention to Taylor Swift, proving that people will get angry about absolutely anything if it represents even the slightest deviation from what they are comfortable with. When confronted with the realization that some NFL fans weren't too pleased by her presence, Swift handled it in the most hilarious way possible, asserting that she has no concern of if she's “being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.” But the question is, was Taylor prepared to piss off an Al?
Al Michaels has called Super Bowl's, World Series', NBA Finals, college football bowl games and Triple Crown horse races. Currently, Michaels serves as the play-by-play man for Amazon's Thursday Night Football broadcast, and despite no longer calling Sunday Night Football on NBC, is still employed by NBC and was expecting to call one of the four NFL Playoff games that will be televised on NBC. It turns out, much to Michaels' surprise, NBC won't be having Michaels on the call for any of those four games.
(This is where the online conspiracy theorists come into play)
The rumor floating around the internet is that Taylor Swift is the reason Al Michaels will not be calling any games in the NFL Playoffs for NBC this year.
(Yeah, you read that correctly)
How, you ask, is Taylor Swift responsible for Al Michaels being left off of NBC's coverage of the NFL Playoffs? Well, to answer that question, we need to take a look at what Al Michaels said back in October regarding Swift, and how Amazon's Thursday Night Football broadcast would handle her presence at a Chiefs/Broncos game.
“Our crew talked about it this morning. You can’t make a sideshow the show,” Al Michaels shared with Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated. “The vast majority of the audience are tuning in to watch a football game. There are people, I don’t know how many, it could be a sizable number, but it’s certainly not a majority, that if you trained the camera on her all night long, they’d be satisfied with that. This is not what we’re doing to do.”
So here's the theory — because Al Michaels referred to Taylor Swift as “a sideshow” and in that same interview went on to the say that by showing Swift too much it would make the broadcast “farcical,” NBC took Michaels off the assignment because he refused to cater to the agenda of catering to the new audience that Swift was bringing in. Of course, it's outlets like Barstool Sports — which has its own “agenda” — that are pedaling this insane conspiracy theory as fact, so forgive me if I'm not taking all of this with an entire shaker of salt. But if Swift, against all odds, has played even the tiniest role in Al Michaels' removal from NBC's coverage of the NFL Playoffs simply because Michaels referred to her presence as a “sideshow,” then it proves that what she says in the song ‘Karma' is true…
‘Cause karma is the thunderRattling your groundKarma's on your scent like a bounty hunterKarma's gonna track you downStep by step from town to town
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