The Football Psyop

So I've been reading the latest theories out there and let me see if I truly understand what's happening in the world of sports and pop culture. In case you've been vacationing in Greenland for the past six months and haven't been following the important news, pop star Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce are dating. She shows up to all of his home games and many of his road games and sits in the luxury box seats with the Kelce family and the wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. She cheers wildly whenever Kelce does something great, which is pretty often since Kelce is a very good player. After the game, they kiss a lot, just like people who are dating tend to do.

Or, maybe, they aren't actually dating... According to the latest theory, the Swift and Kelce relationship is actually an intricate psyop and is totally under the control of the CIA. Swift and Kelce are only dating to increase interest in NFL games and the NFL is scripting the games so that the Chiefs will win the Super Bowl. After the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, which as a result of all of this free publicity will surely be the most watched event in human history, both Swift and Kelce will announce their support for Joe Biden and this will give Biden the final push he needs to be reelected president.

Did I get that right, more or less? I'm pretty sure I'm missing a few details, but that's the gist of it. Let me just say that, if you believe this to be true, I understand and I wish to be as gentle as I can about your acceptance of this theory:

Y'all are dumber than a turnip. Dumber than the dumbest turnip in a bushel of turnips. Dumber than the intellectual capacity of each and every turnip in the entire world. In the entire universe, perhaps, although the turnips on Alpha Centauri are rumored to have some rudimentary math skills, so that might make the comparison a little cloudier.

I confess that I have only limited knowledge when it comes to psyops. I used to work for the government (Department of Defense), but I never worked for the CIA and I have no clue as to whether they could pull off a psyop involving roughly 50,000 people of various political persuasions, all of whom would have to be sworn to secrecy and then never renege on their promise. I spent a decade watching The X Files and based the vast amount of knowledge I accrued from watching a fictional show, I suppose it's possible.

I also referee high school football. This does not make me an expert on officiating NFL football. NFL players are huge and fast and many of them are surprisingly intelligent. The NFL refs that are brave enough to work those games and share a football field with those behemoths are a special lot. Even I can't imagine how difficult it really is. But I can tell you this with absolute certainty. IT IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SCRIPT AN NFL FOOTBALL GAME. There are too many variables and the game moves too fast to script it. To do so would require total buy-in from everyone in the officiating crew and several of the players from each team and probably several of the coaches. If just one guy on the officiating crew was trying to throw a game, say, for betting purposes, it would become immediately obvious to anyone that knew anything about officiating. It would be immediately obvious to members of his own crew. He would be discovered and humiliated and jailed.

Last Sunday, the Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens played for the right to go to the Super Bowl. After the game, which the Chiefs won 17-10, several Ravens fans were unhappy with the officiating. To their credit, most of them blamed the poor play of the Ravens (they lost the turnover stat 3-0) and some weird decisions by the coaching staff for the loss, but felt that the Chiefs should have been called for defensive penalties on three different Raven passes. To be honest, I agreed with them on one of the penalties, when I thought a Chiefs defensive back should have been flagged for defensive holding. In the other two instances, I thought they were good no-calls, but you could have made a case for a flag on either of them. Officiating, especially officiating at that level, is hard and you'll see mistakes in every game. That particular officiating crew doesn't like throwing pass interference or holding penalties, and they stayed consistent with that throughout the game for both teams. Ravens fans also didn't like some unsportsmanlike conduct penalties they got, but the NFL has been pretty clear about what constitutes an unsportsmanlike penalty, so I have less sympathy for those arguments.

That doubt about the calls was all the conspiracy theorists, most of whom are not Ravens fans or even football fans, needed to make their run to Fantasy Island.

Two more points before I close: First, the Chiefs were the victims of some pretty terrible officiating as well. One of the Chiefs defensive players was leg whipped in the Ravens end zone on one play, a call that should have been pretty obvious and would have resulted in a safety and two more point for the Chiefs. Then there were the two phantom holding calls on the Chiefs on consecutive plays that cost the Chiefs a touchdown. As I mentioned, officiating is hard.

Finally, the Chiefs play in the heart of red state country and have a mascot that many on the left wing of politics think is racist. If you were doing a psyop to get Biden elected wouldn't it have made more sense for Taylor Swift to be dating someone from a swing state? Jordan Love, the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, is single and good looking and Wisconsin will definitely be up for grabs this November. As a resident of Kansas, I can promise all of you that if Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift endorse Joe Biden, Kansas and Missouri will still vote for Trump in November.

I would think that the brilliant minds in the CIA would know that. The guys in The X Files certainly would have.