The Tartan

By Arden Ryan

It’s all just too perfect. It couldn’t be true. The 49ers defense couldn’t have accidentally let Patrick Mahomes get those two extra yards for the first down that led to a game-saving touchdown. The 49ers must have let the Chiefs block that extra point that would’ve ended the game after regulation. The NFL must have conspired to script every moment, every play from last Sunday’s Super Bowl to keep viewers tuned in to the last second and sell as many $7 million ad blocks as possible. At least that’s what a not-inconsiderable chunk of viewers believe.

It’s the most classic half-joke/half-excuse in all of sports watching: “Things aren’t looking good for my team; this game is rigged!” I was at a fairly large Super Bowl viewing party, and most of the room wanted San Francisco to win. There wasn’t much desire to see Kansas City take the trophy again, but they did. And in a drawn-out, languorous fashion which only fed into the grumblings: “There must be an ad exec in on this! The directors surely planned for the Super Bowl to go into overtime, right?” There simply could be no other explanation.

Except, of course, that there’s no proof of anything like that. For all the times I’ve heard people talk about the NFL scripting its games to capture the most attention, keep fans on the hook as long as possible, and make the most money from advertisers, no proof of such behavior has come to light. And I don’t see such a revelation ever occurring. But holding out for such evidence misses the real takeaway from probing this prevalent impulse.

Whether or not this year’s championship was played off a pre-written script doesn’t matter. None of us viewers will know that for sure unless some top exec comes forward and blows the lid off some major scheme. I don’t have proof either way, and neither do the countless faceless netizens who throw their wildest theories out there. What matters is whether people believe the NFL is scripted, which, judging by the internet reactions I’ve seen, is no small number of the viewing population. Lots of people think that the Super Bowl was rigged, even if they don’t think Taylor Swift was behind it all. Surely all those money-grubbing club ownership elites planned the whole thing to rake in more ad dollars, right?

I’m not saying that the NFL isn’t a business trying to make more money — it is, in fact, bumping up the number of teams in the playoffs from 12 to 14 in 2020, ostensibly to bring more fan bases into the fold (and profit from more postseason games). A much darker accusation, that the NFL planned it all or that the 49ers threw the big game, looms over what was still an entertaining game.

It’s an election year. Taylor Swift is doing incredible things, no one can argue with that. Tensions are rising in a country increasingly divided by decreasingly significant things. People are grasping at straws for explanations, and the Super Bowl is one extravagantly easy target. It is a cultural touchstone, and even more so this year, becoming the most-watched TV broadcast since the moon landing. Giving in to conspiracy is an itch people are eager to scratch — saying that the game was rigged is a nice, satisfying answer for an agreeably frustrating question.

More than just about football, this flailing out for a conspiracy is a symptom of our current cultural moment. It reflects a habitual, compelling need to produce a satisfying answer when everything in the world seems preplanned and coincidental and inevitable. Maybe this urge isn’t confined to our moment but is a facet of humanity in the modern age: people are driven by a desire for neat answers, even when there are none.

A Trump-Biden rematch seems like an inevitability, a frustrating fact for much of America. One Instagram explainer insisted that it must be a conspiracy because both San Francisco and Kansas City were in the Super Bowl in 2020, the year President Biden was elected, and now a rehash is near-certain.

Some say there’s no real coincidences, that everything happens for a reason. There may be some truth to that, but I think real change is possible. San Francisco could have won that game with the right mix of talent and luck, with a quarterback as fired up as Mahomes was. Although I hate to admit it, the Chiefs were just the better team in that game. They played to win and had what it took to do it.

A savvy video editor with the right voiceover can cherry pick moments from the Super Bowl to create any version of the past they wish, including to say that one 49ers player intentionally dived out of the way to let Mahomes through, thereby casting doubt on the whole game’s legitimacy. In my viewing of it, Kansas City just played a better game that night. At least that’s the reality I choose to believe.

P.S: An unrelated Taylor Swift idea

Turning to Taylor Swift, one has to admit she’s a phenomenon. She has power, and that scares people. A true heavyweight player in society, a mover and shaker for the ages, she is uber-influential. That frightens those who would disagree with the ideas they fear her spreading.

When the internet theorists turn on her with suspicion regarding her alleged interference in the Super Bowl, it is again a symptom of a greater societal agitation. Some see it as unfair for Swift to endorse a presidential candidate or be openly political at all. There was palpable fear on the political right around her leveraging the Super Bowl as a platform to promote President Biden’s reelection. Many people are envious of her influence and believe it to be contrived. Her recent cohabitation with the Chiefs must be a grand conspiracy put on by her and Bud Light and the rest of the woke left.

But, alas, the world isn’t that simple. I can see no proof of a plot and no evidence of manipulation. Taylor Swift is just an incredibly popular superstar doing what superstars do, and the Chiefs just won a football game.