{"id":7182,"date":"2024-02-13T17:10:34","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T22:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/missionwork\/?p=7182"},"modified":"2024-02-13T17:34:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T22:34:24","slug":"bigger-than-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/missionwork\/2024\/02\/bigger-than-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Bigger Than Football"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/p>\n
In a previous post<\/a> I told the story of how a 50ish-year-old Gen Xer who remembers typewriters and loves Billy Joel\u2019s music more than life also became a sort-of-Swiftie. But I have a postscript.<\/p>\n
I fell down the Taylor Swift rabbit hole about the time Taylor began her relationship with Travis Kelce, which trust me, everyone<\/em> has an opinion on. (Is it a psyop<\/a>? A PR stunt? A rom-com we are all actually living in unbeknownst to us? An effort by Taylor to not have to spend her days with another tortured poet<\/a>? Will we ever know and, really, do we ever need to?)<\/p>\n
What interests me the most, or almost the most, about the relationship, though, is that in the course of following it I realized that Taylor was doing something I hadn\u2019t really thought possible:\u00a0she was bringing viewers to the NFL.\u00a0<\/em>So many of them that the NFL was changing its marketing strategy because of her. The NFL changed its profile picture on Twitter<\/s> X to one of her when she started showing up at games.<\/p>\n
Now, I like football. I like sports in general. Particularly I like baseball, I like basketball, and I like football. I like college and pro football. I am, as a Gen Xer, young enough to have had a dad who played sports with me as well as my brother (and took us both to ball games and taught us both to root for all the teams from the state of Michigan \u2013 except for Michigan State), but old enough to know that this was an exception to the general rule. Individual girls liked football and other sports, sure. But football was for\u00a0<\/em>guys. It was just a thing they kind of let us show up for too sometimes. Nothing girls cared about would ever compare to football.<\/p>\n
And somehow it moved me and startled me and changed my perspective on myself as a girl that, in Taylor Swift, girls now had something that was bigger than football<\/em>.<\/p>\n
I thought about this again when I found out that Swifties were buying NFL-themed gingerbread houses (because of course there are NFL-themed gingerbread houses) and redoing them as ERAS Tour stadiums.\u00a0<\/em>Like, literally taking something designed for guys and making it something designed for girls\u00a0without apologizing.<\/em> Without making it\u00a0less than.<\/em> Without, as folks still do in many high schools across the countries, naming the boys\u2019 team the (let\u2019s say) Pirates and the girls\u2019 team the Lady Pirates.<\/p>\n
And then I set it all aside until I woke up this morning to the news that this year\u2019s Travis-and-Taylor Super Bowl was the most watched sports program in television history<\/em><\/a> \u2013 that it was outshone (ba-dum bum) only by the moon landing \u2013 another thing that was designed by guys and for guys and featured guys. (As we\u2019ve all learned since, the guys didn\u2019t get there without the contributions of women<\/a>. But I digress.)<\/p>\n
And also to this parody of Shakespeare from my friend Beth Felker Jones<\/a>, which I have permission to quote:<\/p>\n
\n "\n
How do they hate thee? Because you\u2019re a girl,<\/div>\n
a girl who dared face and pipes and smarts<\/div>\n
and feelings too, girl feelings, which don\u2019t center them.<\/div>\n
And everyone knows women are bad juju<\/div>\n
for sports and sailors too. Witches all,<\/div>\n
if you give them money and a stage.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n "\n
How do we love thee; let us count the ways?<\/div>\n
We love thee for your face and pipes and smarts<\/div>\n
your soul doth reach, touching ours when we feel out of sight<\/div>\n
for being girls. But YOU\u2019RE a girl.<\/div>\n
We\u2019ll take all the gifts you give us, even ones girls aren\u2019t supposed to get.<\/div>\n
You even gave us football, and look at that:<\/div>\n
our team won!<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n*
**
We\u2019ll take all the gifts you give us, even ones girls aren\u2019t supposed to get.<\/em><\/div>\n
**
<\/div>\n
**
And I cried.<\/div>\n
**
<\/div>\n
**
\u2013<\/div>\n
**
<\/div>\n
**
Image: Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
**
*Football was for\u00a0guys. It was just a thing they kind of let us show up for too sometimes. Nothing girls cared about would ever compare to football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1701,"featured_media":7215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,186,116],"tags":[1608,1605,1617,1602,1611,1614],"class_list":["post-7182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-common-good","category-faith-and-family","category-relationships-2","tag-feminism","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-super-bowl","tag-taylor-swift","tag-travis-kelce"],"yoast_head":"\nBigger Than Football<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Football was for\u00a0guys. It was just a thing they kind of let us show up for too sometimes. 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