22-year-old Caitlin Clark as a Kansas City Chiefs fan is exactly what the NFL needs to keep growing their fanbase.
Des Moines, Iowa, is roughly 200 miles from Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs. Multiply that distance by one and a half times, and that is what WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark has to cover from her place of work in Indiana. But none of that matters to her as she continues to be a super fan of the current NFL Super Bowl champions.
She has long been a fan, with the former Iowa Hawkeyes star making multiple visits to Arrowhead Stadium. Even if she cannot make it to games, she watches from wherever she can.
She even posted on X recently about them, after watching the Chiefs score from a boink field goal to win their 12th game of the season. But it does not explain how the 22-year-old with no connections to Kansas City is a fan of a team outside her state.
It is not uncommon for fans supporting teams from neighboring states. Iowa does not have an NFL team, but they do have the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears nearby. Despite those teams being on her radar, she and even her Hawkeyes teammates still preferred the Chiefs, but why?
New gen Caitlin Clark has only seen the Chiefs win
When Patrick Mahomes played his first full season with the Kansas City Chiefs, Caitlin Clark was only 16 years old. From that time, she saw him first become league MVP, as he led his team to an AFC Championship game.
That level of success from technically a rookie quarterback is something that can captivate a young audience. The simple reason being, they can relate to a then 23-year-old quarterback becoming the best in a league where much older, better quarterbacks were still playing.
In fact, a then 41-year-old Tom Brady needed overtime to win against Mahomes in that game. A young fan would have liked if the younger Patrick Mahomes and his Chiefs went to the Super Bowl instead of a quarterback nearing retirement winning alongside a grumpy old head coach.
The next season, Mahomes established himself as the one to watch, as the Chiefs performed one better and won the Super Bowl. Since then, the Kansas City Chiefs have become the gold standard in the NFL as they reached every AFC Championship game until now.
For a young fan such as Caitlin Clark, the franchise will look like a beacon of success. Again, it is not just that they won recently, which would make the WNBA superstar a late fan. She has been watching the Chiefs succeed from her teenage years.
Teenagers gush over such acts of success and are in tune with the current winners than what Brady and the Patriots had when she was even younger. In fact, there may be many more people her age who look at the Chiefs as the definition of a great NFL team.
Taylor Swift’s entrance made it more obvious for Caitlin Clark
Caitlin Clark had openly declared that her favorite musical artist is Taylor Swift. She has others in her playlist as well, but then has a wide smile on her face whenever she talks about the multiple Grammy Award-winning artist.
It also helps that Swift’s music was just the sort that the younger generation, which consists of Clark, have listened to throughout their lives. They may have heard about Mariah Carey and Madonna, but they can relate more to their times with Swift’s songs.
Now when that same globally popular musical artist enters into a romantic relationship with Chiefs superstar tight end Travis Kelce, it just makes it more obvious. Now, two important facets of her life, music and football, have combined to give her one great reason to cheer them even more.
Clark has made it to Eras Tour concerts and even met Travis Kelce in one of them. But that is way after the number of Chiefs players she has met or has posed for pictures with at Arrowhead Stadium. Those visits to GEHA Field were much before Swift and Kelce became a couple.
The NFL probably knows all this
All of this might pertain to Caitlin Clark, but it could also be a similar situation for many people from that generation. Those who are younger than 25 have only seen the Kansas City Chiefs succeed.
Usually, unless one is a die-hard fan of their hometown team or any other team in particular, many go with the team that is successful.
Formula 1 is a great example where fans from the Clark generation have seen either Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen succeed. But the generation one decade older were only accustomed to seeing Michael Schumacher win. If both sides had to debate, they would likely side with their own generation’s superstar.
That is probably what the NFL knows. With billions of dollars invested into marketing, they might know this all too well that the up-and-coming generation relates to the Kansas City Chiefs as the de facto team of the league.
They would also feel that Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback and Travis Kelce the best tight end. Factor in Taylor Swift bringing in a legion of new fans to the NFL and the league is probably grinning everyday. Now the question that should come to the minds of anyone is that will the league risk upsetting all that?
A history setting third straight Super Bowl win, all while Taylor Swift is a part of it, will be the perfect setup for the NFL. The league will give the social media generation something to talk about for years to come. In that grand scheme of things, this will create a new fan base that could stick around.
