The Coach Who Secretly Worked for the CIA

EPISODE 106: Hippie, Hooper, Swimmer, Spy.

You may recall how many on the right publicly accused Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift of being CIA operatives, part of a plot engineered by the Biden campaign to win hearts and minds. You may even remember my desperately opinionated classmate Vivek Ramaswamy accusing the Super Bowl itself of being a psy-op:

Let’s see!

Here was a Monmouth University poll, from the very next month:

Just under 1 in 5 Americans (18%) believe such a conspiracy involving Swift exists. Fully 71% of those who believe this identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 83% indicate they are likely to support Donald Trump in the fall.

Dear god.

And yet: the reason I bring all of this up now is not to fully discredit the basic premise of a visibly brain-wormed conspiracy theory.

I bring all of this up now because while Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are obviously not a CIA psy-op, I did want to bring you the insane, completely true story of a sports figure who actually was.

Special thanks to Shaun Raviv from Sports Explains the World for his reporting. And to the Mullen family for the beautiful song we get to play, at the very end.

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Truthfully,

Pablo