The Newest Taylor Swift Conspiracy Theory: Al Michaels Was Fired From Playoff Duty Because He Refused to Bend the Knee

Mitchell Leff. Getty Images.

I don't know if your X/Twitter algorithm is the same as mine, but for me every single Friday of the 2023 has begun with seeing Al Michaels name under "Trending" on my feed. Often for negative, critical reasons. People haven't liked the way he at times seems disinterested the the Thursday Night games. At times they feel like he's checked out. Or simply bored by the terrible slate of games he's been given. Though I'm definitely with Reags on this point, that any frustration Michaels has shown is entirely justified virtually every time. The man is a national treasure, and deserves better at this point in his career than to be calling over-officiated, flag-ridden games on some side hustle Jeff Bezos came up with to help him put retailers out of business. 

Well Michaels hit the top of trending again this week before he even started the pregame, with this shocking announcement:

And if he wasn't expecting it, he can join the club. Because no actual football fan can make a damned bit of sense out of it. How do you put the man whose voice has been part of the fabric of our lives since the 1970s on the bench? How do you leave someone who has lend his talents to probably half of the most iconic sports moments for well over five decades off your playoff roster? 

It defies logical explanation. And any time something can't be explained with logic, you do what any sane and rational person does. 

You turn to conspiracy theories. 

And I don't mean your garden variety kind, like how Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelce so that when you type "taylor swift jets" into your search bar, you get images of her in the owners' box at Met Life instead of articles ripping her for having a carbon footprint 1,800 times higher than the average nobody. 

I'm talking about the one that says she's behind Al Michaels sitting at home in January instead of sitting in a broadcast booth where America needs him. And this one has it's roots in a story Big Tennessee covered in October:

And his refusal to bend the knee angered the Swifties to the point Amazon will not risk keeping them away from playoff football. You have to admit, as conspiracy theories go, this one works because it's so simple and plausible. The internet certainly agrees:

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Now allow me to elaborate and take you deeper down this hole. It's something I hadn't considered, but I learned this directly in a conversation with someone who's in media.  Someone who knows what they're talking about. It goes like this:

YouTube spent $2 billion on Sunday Ticket, but quickly realized they were not going to see a return on that investment unless something dramatic broke in their favor. Essentially a Venn Diagram with the population of people who watch NFL football and the ones who get most of their entertainment from YouTube has way too little overlap for them to make their money back. So they hired a bunch of (I hate this word with the white hot intensity of a million pizza ovens) influencers, to get a young, non-football audience interested in football. Mr. Beast and a bunch of others. It didn't work. d

Then, like either a miracle or something that was arranged as a brilliant marketing scheme (you make the call), Swift and Kelce started "dating." Not only that, but she started showing up his games. Religiously. The media pounced on the story like a dog with a bone and wouldn't let go until they chewed every last bit of marrow out of it. They still haven't. This just as Swift's concert movie was coming out. And Kelce started getting his insufferable demeanor on every commercial from insurance to Covid boosters. She then not so coincidentally lands on the cover of TIME's "Person of the Year" issue. All part of a coordinated master plan to help the biggest media companies in the western world to recoup their massive investments in the NFL. 

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And there's not much that could harm their scheme or cut into their profits. But one highly respected icon who declared he's not buying into the bullshit could. Michaels declared in no uncertain terms he's not interested in turning the game into a sideshow and the sideshow into the game. 

The broadcast and streaming networks are. The NFL's beloved "broadcast partners" don't give a Tuppenny fuck who's eyeballs are on the screen or why they're there, they just want eyeballs. They're like Frank Cross' boss in Scrooged telling him to create more programming for cats and dogs:

"In 20 years, Al, these Swifties could become steady viewers." 

So that's the theory and I'm buying it. Al Michaels is out because he has too much integrity to bow before this Queen from the foreign kingdom of Pop music. He angered the very people the networks are trying to pander to, and therefore he had to be stopped. Until someone proves me wrong, I'm calling this Urban Myth: CONFIRMED.