Byron Murphy Jr. is about to go through some things.
The Vikings cornerback said Monday that he plans to engage in a little trash talk on Sunday with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce over his new relationship with Taylor Swift.
“I’m going to say something to him to get him going,” Murphy said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com.
On one hand, it’s a great homage to Vikings legend John Randle, who was notorious for doing deep-dive research on opponents in the pre-Internet age so that he could make random, pointed comments aimed at getting inside someone’s head. On the other hand, Murphy could become red meat for the Swifties, who won’t take kindly to the idea that Murphy is being mean to Taylor’s man.
“I’m not hating against it,” Murphy said regarding the NFL’s full embrace of all things Swift. “That’s the world we’re living in. Is she going to come to this game? We’re locked in, but that would be something. I’ve been watching her since I was a kid. That would be cool for sure. . . . Not for him, because we’re going to try to get our hands on him in front of her.”
The NFL has completely embraced the Taylor Swift phenomenon. They’ve splashed her across the top of their Twitter/X firehose. The league’s Instagram page previously said “Chiefs are 2-0 as Swifties.” (It no longer does.)
There has to be a business relationship that has emerged this week between the league and Swift. While there’s no reason to think the relationship was manufactured, now that it has happened, those who can turn such organic developments into dollars and cents are doing so.
The NFL benefits from the attention and interest of her fans. She benefits from the enhanced promotion (which was obvious this weekend) for the upcoming release of her latest concert tour as a film, which surely will gross more money than Star Wars and Titanic combined.
The NFL is used to being the party in a business transaction that enjoys a gross imbalance. For the first time ever, the biggest sports operation in America is dealing with a phenomenon far bigger.
Still, the league would be wise to think carefully about the message its blatant sucking up to Taylor Swift might send, in lieu of the usual approach of stuffing its pockets with more cash as possible and worrying about the potential ramifications later, if ever.
