After Super Bowl winner Tony Dungy criticized Taylor Swift for distracting from football, dads across America took to Twitter to praise the singer for helping them bond with their daughters
the great Super Bowl-winning player and coach Tony Dungy detonated a nuclear bomb when he weighed in on the fanfare surrounding Taylor Swift and her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
“That’s the thing that’s disenchanting people with sports now,” Dungy told Fox News. “There’s so much on the outside coming in. Entertainment value and different things that’s taking away from what really happens on the field.”
Suddenly the former coach — whose words were rather anodyne — was projectile-bombed with a season’s worth of frustration from Swifties who view every slight criticism of their queen as chauvinistic. Even the sports establishment, including ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith (“It’s getting ridiculous how she’s being criticized by some, insulted by others, blamed by many”), had rejoinders for Dungy.
I disagree with Dungy. Not because what he said is misogynistic, but because the league’s collision with the world of entertainment had already been activated before Swift entered her NFL era: Look at the players embracing high fashion, at the attention paid to WAGS, at the intimate private lives revealed in the Netflix series “Quarterbacks.”
The “Cruel Summer” singer simply cranked the volume on those sideline sideshows up to a deafening 10. And she’s brought more, not fewer eyes to the game.
However, as the girl of a dad, I’ve seen something else emerge: The Taylor Swift effect has led to the ultimate realization of the twee #GirlDad culture.
On Monday, sportswriter Kevin Van Valkenburg took to X to post a defiantly sentimental assessment of Swift’s rookie season in the luxury box.
