Taylor the WAG

Conservative media is now claiming that the National Football League is rigging the Super Bowl, so that the Kansas City Chiefs, and therefore Travis Kelce, and therefore Taylor Swift, will win; so that Taylor can then ride that to help President Joe Biden get re-elected.

It's not the craziest conspiracy they've ever come up with. But it's one of the dumber ones. Why the hell would the NFL rig the Super Bowl for the Chiefs? There's 3 big reasons why they wouldn't do that:

1. They wouldn't rig it at all. They want people to bet on the game. Therefore, they would want the game to appear to be on the level.

2. What's the point? The Chiefs are the defending Champions. They don't need the rigging.

3. Of the NFL's 32 teams, 28 are owned by contributors to Donald Trump's Presidential campaign. Clearly, they don't want Biden to win.

Of course, the right-wingers are ready, either way. If the San Francisco 49ers win, they'll say it was rigged to help liberal San Francisco against conservative Missouri and Kansas. So, either way, they look like idiots.

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Anyway... Today, on The View on ABC, Sara Haines made the point that American football has places for women: As cheerleaders, and in the stands. Their place is not by the side of their boyfriend or husband, the player.

And they see Taylor Swift cozying up to Travis Kelce, star tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs, and his family. And they don't like it.

They also don't like that she's registering voters to vote the way she would want them to: For Democrats, for women's rights, and other liberal causes.

Yes, Haines used the phrase "American football." That's important. Because, whether she meant to or not, it draws a contrast to soccer, the sport the rest of the world calls "football."

In England, they have "WAG Culture." WAG: Wives And Girlfriends. If an English soccer star, or a foreign soccer star in England's Premier League, still the highest-grossing sports league in the world -- ahead of the mighty NFL, mind you -- has a girlfriend or a wife (hopefully, not both) who is also famous, it provides the same kind of effect as when Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe got married (and, just as quickly, divorced): Each builds on the other's fame, until, on top of what they were already famous for, they become "famous for being famous."

America isn't used to that. Reggie Jackson was very good at keeping his private life private: He married once, was divorced while still in Oakland, and if he ever dated a famous woman while in the markets of New York (with the Yankees) or Los Angeles (with the team then named the California Angels), the media never found out.

Also in Reggie's time, nobody seemed to care who Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Carl Yastrzemski, George Brett, Ozzie Smith, Rickey Henderson, Don Mattingly or Ryne Sandberg was married to. Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez both dated famous women, but that was in New York, which isn't like the rest of the country.

In other sports, Joe Montana's wife was Jennifer Wallace, and Wayne Gretzky's wife was Jennifer Jones, and neither was ever anything more than a minor actress. Michael Jordan and Dan Marino had embarrassing divorces, but they were quickly forgotten. We hear lots of talk about LeBron James' son Bronny, but how many of us recognize the name of Savannah Brinson, LeBron's wife and Bronny's mother?

Tom Brady was married to Gisele Bündchen, but that was treated as an afterthought. Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs quarterback and Kelce's teammate, having led them into a 4th Super Bowl and looking for a 3rd win, is the most famous player in the NFL, but how many of us would recognize his wife on sight? Or recognize her maiden name, Brittany Matthews? And she was a pro athlete, too, a soccer player. She's one of the co-owners of the K.C. area's team in the National Women's Soccer League, the Kansas City Current. And yet, she can walk through Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan without one single autograph request. Her husband can't do that.

There's something else to consider about the Taylor & Travis phenomenon. Taylor Swift is the 1st female performer to be, unquestionably, the biggest music star in America. Every predecessor in that regard was male: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles (British rather than American, but embraced by America), Michael Jackson.

Not Madonna. When she first hit it big in 1984, Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Prince were bigger. When she was at her most hyped and controversial, in 1989 and '90, Jackson was still bigger. So were imports U2. Janet Jackson was never the biggest. Nor was Jennifer Lopez. The Beehive won't like reading this, but Beyoncé has been with Jay-Z since 2002, and he's been either the biggest or 2nd-biggest hip-hop figure longer than that, so Bey has never even been the biggest performer in her own relationship.

Yes, there is an element of race involved. If Beyoncé had merely collaborated with Jay-Z, and never gotten into a relationship with him, she would still be very big. But being black would have prevented her from being the biggest star among white fans. Taylor doesn't have that issue. She does have issues, but not that one.

But Taylor got to where she is by writing and singing songs about a troublesome love-life. And while she did sing, "I'm the problem, it's me" in "Anti-Hero," a lot of her songs are about breakups with inadequate boyfriends.

Guys see this, and think, "If only she'd come to me, I could show her a real man." Then she starts dating a Super Bowl-winning football star, and they feel betrayed. And so they hate her.

And, like Mariah Carey a few years earlier, she can sing a song titled "Shake It Off." (Neil Sedaka also had a Number 1 hit titled "Bad Blood" decades before Taylor did.) And that just ticks them off more.

Let them be ticked off.

By the way, you should have seen the look on my face when I remembered that there were meat-packing companies named Taylor and Swift.

The Taylor Provisions Company, of course, invented pork roll, and still sell more of it than anybody else. They sell it under the name "Pork Roll." Not "Taylor Ham."