Al Michaels Says Amazon's TNF Broadcast Will Not Cater To The Swifties

Sports Illustrated — TMZ reported that Taylor Swift will be in attendance at tonight’s Broncos-Chiefs game in Kansas City. Given that NBC went completely overboard the last time we saw TSwift at a game, I asked Amazon’s Al Michaels whether he could tell us how his crew plans on covering this enormous development.

“What we’re gonna do tonight, everything in moderation,” said Michaels. “Our crew talked about it this morning. You can’t make a sideshow the show. The vast majority of the audience are tuning in to watch a football game. There are people, I don’t know how many, it could be a sizable number, but it’s certainly not a majority, that if you trained the camera on her all night long, they’d be satisfied with that. This is not what we’re doing to do.

“There might be an appropriate shot or a couple. I don’t know what the number is going to be. If Kelce scores six touchdowns, who the hell knows what we’re going to do. But for the most part, just in moderation. The game is still the important element here, by far. That’s our thought. After that, you sort of make it, one of my favorite words, farcical.”

I asked Michaels whether we’ll see more of Swift if the game turns into a blowout since the Chiefs are the Chiefs and the Broncos stink.

"Moderation. That's our word. Everything in moderation. What do you do at a certain point? 'There she is.' O.K. Got it.”

The Swifties are NOT going to be happy with Al Michaels after these comments. You just made the list, old man.

I am by no means a hardcore Swiftie myself, but it's incredibly clear to anyone with a functioning brain that Michaels has no idea what's good for Thursday Night Football viewership if he thinks a majority of people are clamoring for breakdowns of Broncos defensive line stunts over Taylor Swift shots.

There's been precisely one good TNF game this year and it was the season opener, meaning it did not occur on a short week. The rest of these games have and will continue to be trash, because three days is nowhere near enough time to recover and prepare for an NFL game. Which is all to say: show us Taylor.

Again, I'm not even a Taylor Swift fan, but when she's at one of Travis Kelce's games — particularly one that's likely going to be a blowout — it's insane to pretend she's not a storyline. This woman has 274 million Instagram followers.

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NBC didn't go "overboard" when Swift attended her last Chiefs game, it understood what was good for business and why a huge portion of the audience was even tuned in to begin with. There were millions of people watching who would have never dared to sit down for Chiefs-Jets, or any football game for that matter, otherwise.

I never thought I'd be forced to defend the need for more Taylor Swift coverage, but look what Al Michaels made me do.