The NFL is playing with fire.

And some heretical thoughts on Taylor Swift. Because… why not!

The Buffalo Bills just got out of Arrowhead with a victory after narrowly beating the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs had essentially won the game, but a touchdown they scored with just over a minute to play was called back after the refs threw a penalty flag. The Bills were able to hang on by the skin of their teeth, which led to players on the Chiefs sideline looking shattered and demoralized—even enraged—as if they’d just been eliminated from playoff contention.

I’m a fan of the Bills—who were hosed by the refs in brutal fashion two weeks earlier—but I’ve long been disturbed by the poor officiating in the NFL. You could argue that the Chiefs have now been hamstrung by the referees in two straight games where the outcomes have dramatically impacted the team’s chances of securing the #1 playoff seed in their conference. I’m actually fine with the outcome of the previous game, because one of the bad calls late in that game went in the Chiefs’ favor.

After the Bills sealed their win, Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes melted down on the sideline. Mahomes, usually the picture of decorum and never one to complain about bad calls, was more upset than anyone has ever seen him in public. Mahomes’ outburst should come as a warning: people have a breaking point, and there’s only so much they can take before flipping their shit.

I’ve also long had a theory that people—even billionaires who run their own sports leagues—are attached to feeling powerless. That, yes, even NFL owners feel compelled to put themselves in a situation where they get stung by the shortcomings of the very machine they themselves own. Sure, not all of them care about winning, but some of them (like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones) sure as shit look like they care. And they’ve been burned too!

I understand that refereeing is an extremely difficult job, and that the play on the field is happening way faster than any of us can imagine while sitting at home on our couches. But that’s the point: the job requires so much skill and yet—believe it or not—it’s a part-time gig. The league won’t create the infrastructure for refereeing to be a full-time job. With the billions of dollars the NFL rakes-in annually, you’d think they’d care about the product enough to create an academy where refs train for years.

I am convinced that the NFL’s runaway success has led to the kind of hubris that comes with the illusion of a perpetual-growth business model. Surely the bubble’s going to burst at some point. What goes up must come down—particularly when the people running the show are drunk on their own success and are too shortsighted, greedy, and stupid to see that they’re steering straight towards and iceberg.

A text I sent to my brother after the game:

I've been saying for years—since New Orleans—that it's only a matter of time before one of these referees gets murdered, or there's a serious riot after one of these games where lots of people die and there's tons of destruction. I'm shocked it hasn't happened already.

Especially now with the internet where if certain people really put their mind to it, they can find anybody's address. There are lunatic fans of every team out there who have nothing else to live for and would actually kill over this stuff.

The NFL has been playing with fire for way too long. Their whole business model depends on people investing emotionally in their teams. People are fanatical and live and die by these outcomes. When that happened with the Saints that year, I'm VERY surprised those officials got out of there alive. And I honestly wouldn't have felt bad for them if they hadn't.

There's 50 to 60,000 people at a football game. There's a tiny fraction of that who are working as security or police. You get a mob THAT upset by snatching their hope away so brutally and terrible things can happen. And it would absolutely be the league's fault.

I personally think they're scum. They're too cheap—or dishonest—to pay for full-time referees. They could pay for an academy where you learn for years and years how to officiate. But I suspect they keep the officiating inadequte on purpose, just to have an excuse to have these wild swings in these games.

In certain South American countries soccer referees do get killed, and in Europe riots are common after soccer games. The league just keeps pissing in the fans' faces. Eventually it's going to backfire and the NFL will no longer be the number one sport in America. Mark my words!

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift was in attendance. Swift has been dating superstar Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and her presence, of course, has made huge waves. I was saddened last month when Ana Clara Benevides, a fan who’d attended Swift’s concert in Rio de Janeiro, passed away due to the extreme heat in the venue. I thought Swift made the right call by postponing the second Rio show she’d been scheduled to play. And I thought, “my god, how tragic to die at an event where you thought you were going to have the experience of a lifetime.”

So I don’t want to be cavalier or come off like I’m disparaging people’s love for her. I have nothing against Taylor Swift or her music. But the chorus of people who inflate her significance and, for some strange reason, think everyone else has to do the same on some vague and flimsy sense of moral imperative need a reality check.

Don’t get me wrong: if I ever see someone grooving to Taylor or talking about how much they love her, I will keep my mouth summarily shut. It’s not my place to be telling people they’re “wrong” about what they like or—ugh—to start DEBATING them. The young woman who went to that concert would tell me to promptly shut the fuck up. And, from her point of view, she’d be right.

So if you wanna go bananas over her, knock yourself out. I’m genuinely happy that people get as much enjoyment out of her stuff as they do. I might even be one of them one day if her appeal ever clicks for me. And even if it doesn’t, she’s clearly got enormous talent, drive, charisma, etc. I’m still open to the possibility that I’d be blown away if I ever went to one of her shows. Ya never know. Either way, though, too much gets projected onto her, and it actually makes her seem less likable than she is. Not everyone has to like the same stuff as you, and it’s not right to turn artists into human shields for whatever crusade you wanna push.

And before anyone pulls it out of their back pocket that it’s “misogynistic” to dare question her appeal, I can—literally—think of 200 other female artists who I find at least as important as Swift. (I’d started working on a YouTube video where I go down my list, but out of respect for Benevides, I held off. I plan on mentioning Benevides in the video.) I’m not saying these other artists are “better” than Swift, but maybe people who don’t love Taylor aren’t missing anything. Maybe it’s just as simple as “to each their own.” Let’s leave it at that, shall we? After all, we’re talking about music here.

Maybe I should invite a panel of Swifties onto my YouTube to tell me how wrong I am. That would be fun—or at least funny. In the meantime, stay tuned! And keep yourself alive at shows. And football games.

Much love… SRK