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Al Michaels reveals way he'll handle Taylor Swift coverage
Taylor Swift. Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports

Al Michaels reveals surprising way he'll handle 'TNF' Taylor Swift coverage

Iconic sports broadcaster Al Michaels will get his first opportunity to call an NFL game under the microscope of the budding "Traylor" romance between Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and superstar singer-songwriter Taylor Swift on Thursday.

It doesn't sound like the voice of "Thursday Night Football" plans to make a huge deal out of this fall's biggest celebrity relationship during the broadcast though.

"What we’re gonna do tonight, everything in moderation," Michaels told Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated on Thursday morning. "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."

Kelce said last week that he thought the league was "overdoing it a bit for sure," in terms of coverage of his and Swift's relationship.

According to a report by the New York Post, NBC cameras flashed to the 12-time Grammy Award-winner in the suite at MetLife Stadium 17 times during Kansas City's Week 4 win over the New York Jets on "Sunday Night Football."

The NFL garnered headlines earlier this month when it changed its banner photo on X, formerly known as Twitter, to three images of Swift cheering during the "SNF" game. The league also changed its bio on X to read "We had the best day with you today."

The NFL faced backlash after it briefly changed the bio on its Instagram account to "Chiefs are 2-0 as swifties," before swiftly removing the words. 

In a statement to the New York Post, the league said that they "frequently change (their) bios and profile imagery based on what’s happening in and around (the) games, as well as culturally."

"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," Michaels said. "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."

The 78-year-old admitted to Traina that he didn't "necessarily" have a favorite song by Swift, but his granddaughter and her friends are "completely obsessed."

"They went to a Taylor Swift concert in L.A., and they prepared for it for a month," he said.

The "Anti-Hero" singer first nearly broke the internet with her September appearance at Arrowhead Stadium during the Chiefs' Week 3 contest against the Chicago Bears. Swift was spotted sitting in a stadium suite with Donna Kelce (the mother of Travis and Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce).

After taking in Kansas City's Week 4 victory against the Jets, Swift wasn't in attendance when the Chiefs defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Week 5 at U.S. Bank Stadium.

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