I'm a Bills fan. I don't care that we lost.

What I care about is that another Chiefs player not named Travis Kelce scored twice last night and instead of showing his family, who I'm fairly confident we're in the stands last night (Isiah Pacheco), they immediately went to Taylor.

Here's my shit: I don't care if you're only watching the Chiefs games for Taylor Swift. You do you. That's pretty much the equivalent of people who only watch the Super Bowl for the halftime show.

What annoys me is the people who are still like "yay Taylor's boyfriend!" and "yay football!" like that shit stopped being cute in like week 8.

The mom of some kid who I coached on swim team posted a selfie on Facebook last night in an NFL: Taylor's version sweatshirt with the caption literally: "yay football".

Like Crystal. You have three sons ON VARSITY FOOTBALL. Your entire personality is trying to be a real life Leslie Knope. Cut the crap.

So, first, shoutouts to Isiah Pacheco for helping me win my fantasy football league this year

Second, before I say what I'm about to say, please don't think that I'm in the Taylor Swift fan club. She's not terrible by any stretch; I think "Delicate" is a legitimately good song and I like the bones of "Bad Blood" (even though I prefer the Ryan Adams cover to her version). But imo she's really overrated as a musician and songwriter. Someone in her life has to tell her that "Paris" does not rhyme with "where else" and that "mirror" does not rhyme with "hero." It's really actually painful to listen to some of her material.

Anyway.

Barry, I'm not sure what you expect from people who are new to football. Of all the major American sports, football is by far the hardest to understand. The down system is really silly and makes no sense, penalties are badly defined and inconsistently enforced,* there's a shitload of specialized jargon that no one ever explains, the tactics are too complex to explain during a TV broadcast, and even if people tried to explain the tactics you wouldn't be able to see them play out because the stupid camera only shows you the line of scrimmage. And this is the experience of someone who grew up playing other sports.

Basically, the barrier for entry to football is super fucking high, especially for people who aren't athletes and haven't had years of experience watching and analyzing professional sports. Give them some fucking time. I mean, how long has it been? Five months or something? If this is still happening a year from now, then you've got a gripe. But these are people who probably have literally no other connection to the sport. They're not gonna turn into fucking Mark Schlereth overnight, man.

*Did you know that NFL reffing is so bad that teams scout the refs? It's true! Look it up!

I'm not a fan of the coverage she gets during games, but on the Taylor Swift sub-reddit the Swifties there put up a game thread for Chiefs games she attends and honestly reading through it is one of the more heart-warming things I've seen on the internet in quite a long time...

Agree with you completely on this point. I follow the game on Sky here in the UK, and it's a regular bugbear of mine that you never see (from that live action, side-on angle) what's happening in the secondary. I always think that I'm only seeing half of what the offense or defense are doing at any point. Frustrating.

That said - genuine question - why do you say the down system makes no sense? Sorry, but I'm not sure what you're getting at there. (Blame it on being British!)

But one thing that I do admire about the gameplay/rules in the NFL compared to our football is that there's no distinction between an accidental or deliberate offence: it's either a foul or it isn't, and that's that. That's a wonderfully straightforward principle compared to what I'm used to over here. You should see the rows and division triggered in our game every week by unresolvable arguments - short of mind-reading devices - over whether a trip or handball was intentional or not...

Why does it matter who are fans? Why does it matter that someone said they loved their girlfriend. Hell people don't bitch when an athlete says I love my mom, or I thank god or praise Jesus for whatever went their way. What you have to realize is that the NFL is wanting ratings. As long as swifties are coming to the TV in droves to see this stuff, they are going to keep showing it. It is all about the ratings and the clicks. That is why you see the coverage that you do with Taylor and Travis. Honestly I don't give a fuck about either of them. So what if they show Travis sending hearts to his girlfriend. It is all a business and not about the sports. It has not been about the sports aspect in a long time. Hell the whole league is almost as scripted as the WWE at this point with the way the refs are impacting the outcomes.

It's sort of a combination of stuff? For example, in most major sports, there is no similar mandatory subdivision of the mission you're supposed to accomplish. Like, there's no rule in soccer that says you have to get the ball into the attacking third within X minutes or Y passes or else it's a turnover. (The one exception that I know of is hockey's weird rules about where the puck can go under which circumstances, which I also find bizarre and hard to understand.) imo it feels weird and artificial to limit a possession like that. To me it'd feel a lot more natural if every offense had, y'know, 12 plays (or whatever) to score every time they touched the ball.

It also feels kinda weird that you don't get any real advantage from getting a new first down before third or fourth down. Like, you don't get to keep those extra downs or anything. To me that feels kinda like if baseball forced every hit to be either a single or a home run (or, to go back to soccer, if every non-PK penalty in soccer was taken from the same spot on the pitch). It's weird that there's no particular reward for exceeding the minimum requirement.

It also feels weird that you have to use one of your downs to surrender the ball. Again, I can't think of anything similar in any other sport, where you're forced to use one of your team's resources to help the other team.

I guess probably this is just a me thing? And now that I know more about the game, I understand how the down system plays into the sport's unique tactics and stuff. But I still just feel like it's a weird thing that runs counter to how sports normally work.