-
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
Two Sundays ago, my confused 11-year-old daughter Vivian and I were sitting on the couch together.
“Daddy, why is Travis Kelce running from one side of the field to the other before the ball is snapped?” she asked during the AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens.
I told her he was going in motion, which gave me the opportunity to explain the differences between man-to-man and zone defenses.
This intricate question served as the culmination of a season where my daughter learned the ins and outs of the beautiful game her father loves so much.
Each time the Chiefs played on national television in 2023, Vivian would sit down and watch with me. The questions started out simple.
“Daddy, what do the yellow lines mean? What does 1st and 10 mean?” she’d question.
Now, we’d moved all the way to defensive schemes, and I was the proudest papa around.
On the play in question two weeks ago Kelce, the Chiefs hall of fame tight end, ran down the right sidelines and caught a touchdown pass.
“Touchdown, Travis!” she screamed.
As the camera panned away from the end zone, it peered in on the person who sparked her newfound romance with the sport.
“Look Daddy, there’s Taylor!”
For those who’ve been living under a rock the last six months, Taylor Swift, the biggest music star in the world, is dating Travis Kelce, and Vivian, like many girls her age, is a bona fide Swiftie.
Vivian loves the two of them together, and secretly believes that Kelce will propose to Swift after this weekend’s Super Bowl.
Vivian has immersed herself in all things “Tayvis,” as the power couple is called, and that healthy obsession has merged her favorite thing with mine.
As a father, I have nothing but thanks and admiration for Swift, who, through football, has brought Vivian and I closer than we’ve ever been.
However, while watching the national news over the last few days, Vivian asked me a very poignant question that I couldn’t answer.
Some conservative news pundits argued that the NFL rigged the Super Bowl for Kansas City so Swift could spread Democrat propaganda ahead of the big game. Fox News host Jesse Waters speculated that Swift might be a Pentagon “psyop” — an asset used for psychological operations.
“Why do people try to bring politics into everything, daddy?” she rightly asked.
Her question stumped me, and made me long for the days when no one cared what musicians thought about politics.
However, in today’s society, where every single person is defined by their political identity, we’re all forced to see politics everywhere all the time.
Last Thursday, I was stopped at the light at Franklin and Carter Streets here in Hartwell. A man pulled next to me in a Chevy Silverado. He had his windows down blaring The Allman Brothers hit “Ramblin’ Man,” complete with a Trump 2024 sticker on his back windshield.
Given the culture we live in today, I thought, “Does he know the Allmans raised money and campaigned on the road for Democrat Jimmy Carter, and played in the White House after his inauguration?”
He probably doesn’t, because he was fortunate enough to grow up in a generation where a musician’s political leanings had no bearing on every day life.
If only Vivian could be that lucky.