Cooties!

So my preferred football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, did not beat the Oakland, um, LA, um, Oakland, um, Las Vegas Raiders in a Christmas Day football game. On the one hand, this is depressing. On the other hand, even when the Raiders win they lose, because they still have to be the Raiders.

But in the wake of the loss, we have opinions from two men I usually enjoy ignoring: Sports trolls Clay Travis and Skip Bayless. Both suggest the blossoming romance between star Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and singer/songwriter Taylor Swift had become a “distraction.” See, when guys turn their minds from pure football to things like girls, they stop thinking straight or being able to play well. Or so this thinking says. You may remember it from when you were six and did your best to exclude the opposite sex from anything you could because they were icky. But then you grew up.

Unless, apparently, you think like Messrs. Bayless and Travis. Travis, in fact, goes on to dredge up the Yoko Ono comparison. But Ms. Ono did not break up the Beatles - their own egos did a much more thorough job than she ever could have. And Ms. Swift has not jinxed the Chiefs. A less gifted offensive coordinator, an iffy receiving corps that has a bad case of the yips, defenses that are collapsing on Kelce because one defender apiece can handle the other guys? Yeah, those things have jinxed the Chiefs.

Sports reporters will explore some of those issues in upcoming stories. But not Mr. Bayless and Mr. Travis, who are too busy proving to the world they don’t have girl germs like Travis Kelce does.