Brittany Mahomes has hit out at NFL fans criticizing her new best friend Taylor Swift, sharing a post on Instagram where NBA legend Charles Barkley called the singer’s football critics ‘losers’.
Accompanying the post, Mahomes wrote; ‘Let. Them. Know’ underneath Barkley saying: ‘If you’re screaming at Taylor Swift saying she ruined football, you’re just a loser.’
Swift has endured criticism since her and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce went public with their relationship in late September – mainly through fans getting frustrated with how often she is getting filmed cheering him on mid-game.
The singer addressed the criticism in an interview with TIME magazine after they crowned her Person of the Year for 2023.
‘I’m just there to support Travis,’ she said. ‘I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.’
Her appearances have caused a huge spike in TV viewing figures and brought an entirely new demographic to football, which is receiving a boom from the popstar.
Barkley, who is an NBA analyst for TNT Sports and an 11xtime all-star from his playing career with the 76ers, Suns and Rockets, was asked by CNN how he viewed Swift’s influence on the game.
‘If you’re screaming at Taylor Swift saying she’s ruined football. You’re just a loser,’ Barkley said. ‘You’re just a loser or a jackass. One of the two.
‘When it comes to the Super Bowl, where a lot of people who don’t watch football all year long double the audience even of the conference championship games, part of that is the half-time entertainment, the commercials.
‘So people all of a sudden because they don’t like something about Taylor Swift, they don’t like the Chiefs or they’ve inferred Taylor Swift might not be a Trump-er then they are annoyed by her.
‘I can guarantee that all this news on Fox news would not be happening if she was wearing a MAGA hat. They would love it.
‘It’s hard to imagine the Super Bowl could have a larger rating but in a small percentage it may even up that and in terms of merchandise sales – the Travis Kelce jersey and all the rest – and the attention to regular season games the NFL reigns supreme over sports but over all of American entertainment.
‘In a fractionalized universe it is the only thing that consistently aggregates huge audiences.’
Mahomes has been widely criticized herself this week across social media. She was called out for her ‘high horse’ behavior in the Chiefs’ AFC Championship postgame celebrations.
While walking on M&T Bank Stadium’s turf in Baltimore on Sunday with her Chiefs quarterback husband after Kansas City’s 17-10 victory over the Ravens, cameras caught Brittany asking a stadium employee, ‘Where do we go from here?’ as she rotated her finger in the form of a circle.
She appeared to address the furore with her own cryptic social media post on Wednesday, sharing a quote that said: ‘I take rumors as a compliment. The fact that you’re bringing my name onto tables I don’t sit at shows your obsession. Stay bothered.’
Brittany, 28, married Chiefs quarterback Patrick in March 2022 and they have two children together.
