Right-wing conspiracy theorists are claiming the NFL Super Bowl has been rigged to facilitate a Taylor Swift endorsement of Joe Biden.

Taylor Swift has shattered virtually every major record in the music industry, and as she lives her best life supporting her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, she’s also breaking the brains of right-wingers.

For months now, the digital fever swamps have been fuming over everything and anything Swift-related. Her popularity, the success of the Eras Tour, her relationship, her appearances at NFL games, and especially her politics. The Chiefs won the AFC championship on Sunday, punching the team’s (and potentially Swift’s) ticket to the Super Bowl in February. In response, long-standing conspiracy theories around the NFL’s “scriptwriting” for football seasons clashed with right-wing conspiracy theorists claiming Swift’s involvement with Kelce is part of a deep state plot to gin up support for President Joe Biden in the 2024 election. The result is as ugly as it is stupid.

Former presidential candidate and MAGA blowhard Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted on Monday that he wondered “who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” adding, “I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

  • NightGaunts@kbin.social
    84·
    11 months ago

    I like how you casually drop a ridiculous conspiracy at the top. Just how exactly would the rigging work? Are all the owners in on it? The players too? The refs? Vendors? What about Kapernick? Is he in on it too? Maybe I am in in it too?

    • beardown@lemm.ee
      2·
      11 months ago

      The officiating has been historically terrible this year. Multiple game deciding calls were missed or wrongly made.

      If you want to decide games to ensure that the spread does/doesn’t hit then you just need to throw in a few pass interference penalties or holding calls. Aka, the most inconsistently applied and most subjective calls in sports

      • cmbabul@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        Strike zone and the definition of a balk are up there too, but I’ve been watching football at both major levels for 25 years and I still couldn’t tell you what constitutes a hold anymore. There’s always been holding on every play but I’ve seen egregious no calls and phantom calls in key moments at a far higher rate than I remember even as recently as pre pandemic

    • cmbabul@lemmy.world
      1·
      11 months ago

      Ridiculous to setup a sporting event for gambling purposes? You’re right that’s definitely never happened in major US sports, not like the World Series was ever famously thrown and fighters have never gone down in the 4th round, points shaving definitely isn’t a thing either. This isn’t like the moon landing where thousands of people would have to tell the same lie forever, in football especially all it would take is one or two on field officials and a couple in the booths to make a few questionable calls to severely tilt the game in one direction or the other.

      Is the result predetermined before the season or even the playoffs, no that would actually be absurd and nearly impossible to set up, but setting things up so the two most potentially profitable teams win in the championship round and move on isn’t that outlandish an idea.

      And I didn’t even make the contention they were in fact rigging it, I said I wouldn’t be shocked if I found out they were. Because NFL teams owners are cutthroat greedy assholes top to bottom unless Bezos’s ex wife bought a team without me knowing