Sunday afternoon’s presentation of “America’s Game of the Week” on FOX Sports was a pivotal matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears with significant early season implications in the standings. While the quarterback matchup of Patrick Mahomes against Justin Fields was responsible for much of the buzz leading up to the National Football League (NFL) game, the attention quickly shifted when one of the country’s most notorious superstars showed up to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium to take in the action.

Taylor Swift, while in the midst of her worldwide tour that has reportedly grossed over $2 billion in the United States alone, was present at the game after rumored interactions with Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce. Last week on The Pat McAfee Show, Kelce revealed that he extended an invitation to her to watch him “rock the stage” at Arrowhead Stadium, similar to what he did when she played the venue in July.

Swift took in the contest from Travis Kelce’s suite and was enthusiastic when Kelce was announced on the field and scored a touchdown to make it a 40-0 ballgame. After the game, the duo was recorded leaving the stadium together in a convertible and drove around Kansas City alone. While it has not been confirmed whether or not they are officially dating, many football and Swift fans assume that there is indeed a romantic relationship, or perhaps one is imminent.

Kansas City sports radio host Bob Fescoe received word that Swift would be at the game several hours before kickoff, incredulous that the sourced report was genuine. Throughout the contest, much of the attention was focused on Swift, with infatuated fans recording the suite and plenty of photographers trying to catch a glimpse of the 12-time Grammy Award-winning superstar.

“This has become a big ruse; this has become a big joke,” Fescoe remembered thinking after learning of her arrival. “Lo and behold, Taylor Swift ended up being at the football game yesterday.”

Josh Klingler, who works on Chiefs radio broadcasts as the sideline reporter, was on the air when word of Swift’s presence began circulating and precipitously recognized the palpable buzz surrounding the superstar. In the moment, he chose to stay the course and proceeded to search the dates for “The Eras Tour” during a commercial break to see if it was indeed possible that she would show up. Sure enough, Swift emerged on the suite level and took in the entirety of the Chiefs’ 41-10 win over the Bears, dominating part of the media coverage because of her whereabouts.

“I text somebody else that I know is at Arrowhead that’s on the suite level and I said, ‘Is Taylor Swift there today?,’” Fescoe said Monday morning on 610 Sports Radio. “The response back was one of the funniest I’ve ever received. They go, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but on every level, everybody is standing outside the elevator with their phones up hoping the door opens and Taylor Swift walks out.’”

Since Swift was attending a game, there was an increased police and security presence at the stadium to ensure her safety. The Chiefs visit MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. to face the New York Jets on Sunday Night Football for their Week 4 matchup, and being that Swift keeps a residence in the “Big Apple,” there is a chance she shows up for the game. Kelce, along with Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid, have propelled the team into a new level of prominence and prestige and are the center of attention in the worlds of sports and pop culture.

“Just think about what happened yesterday, guys,” Fescoe said. “We had Taylor Swift show up [and] Derek Jeter interviewing Patrick Mahomes for the FOX pregame show. The Chiefs are the most popular entertainment option in this country right now. It’s the modern-day version of The Beatles, and I don’t know what The Beatles were like because I wasn’t alive, but you hear about it all the time.”

Football insiders, in addition to reporting on the Chiefs-Bears game, were trying to unearth more information about Swift choosing to attend the matchup. KTRH 740 AM Houston reporter Cliff Saunders posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he did not understand why all of the attention was diverted to Swift rather than the football game at hand. In fact, he called the curiosity of insiders “embarrassing,” leading Fescoe to respond to the assertion on the air.

“No it’s not,” Fescoe said. “She is the most popular person in the world, and she was at an NFL game yesterday to see Travis Kelce catch a touchdown pass.”

Despite the already top-notch coverage of the Chicago Bears and the NFL as a whole, 670 The Score hosts Danny Parkins and Matt Spiegel felt there were a few things missing that would take the station and Parkins & Spiegel to the next level.

Enter Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion Kurt Warner.

On Friday’s edition of the show, Parkins announced that the Westwood One Monday Night Football analyst would be a recurring guest from the site of the Monday night game every week starting this week.

This was in addition to them announcing that Peter King of NBC Sports would also be a weekly guest on the show on Tuesdays at 4:30.

“We’ve still been looking for a couple other things,” Spiegel said of the areas of their show they could add featured interviews. “There’s some slots that have been kind of open – and peeling back the curtain – you start talking about this stuff over the summer and even in August. And then you really kind of get to chasing. And you have certain dreams. Like national news maker, news breaker. National football analyst of note is one of the spots we’ve been looking for and kind of wanting someone to slot in like on a Tuesday.”

So King will appear in addition to former Bears QB Chase Daniel on Tuesdays. Daniel does film breakdowns for the show.

Kurt will appear in addition to Bears reporter Mark Grote and Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson, who do their weekly check-ins with the show on Mondays.

Both Parkins and Spiegel jokingly viewed the addition of Warner as an upgrade compared to Trent Dilfer and Boomer Esiason, who used to be regulars on the show in the past.

“So we replaced Dilfer and Boomer with Chase Daniel and Kurt Warner,” Parkins said. “Pretty damn good!”

Danny added that he didn’t think it was possible that they would be able to land someone of Warner’s caliber as a regular, but they’re thankful for the opportunity because they noted that Dilfer told them that the only person he trusts more to talk the quarterback position than him is Warner.

They played a clip of Warner breaking down a Justin Fields play, and Parkins said how thrilled he was to have someone with that kind of analytical mind on the program.

“He’s so good. So good!” he said. “So the idea that he’s decided to come on the show every week from the site of Monday Night Football is just so exciting.”

Thursday night’s matchup between the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers ended up being a compelling game to watch throughout the first several quarters and was enhanced by the stellar images and presentation from Amazon Prime Video. The Thursday Night Football property recently garnered record-setting streaming numbers from its season premiere, according to a custom integrated streaming report by Nielsen Media Research.

Even so, there was critical feedback from many fans watching regarding the sonic experience of watching the game. Viewers complained that there was an inherent lack of crowd noise and field-level sound, making it more difficult to fully immerse themselves in the atmosphere.

“You pay all this money for that game [and] you can’t hear that it sounds like crap,” Patrick “Seton” O’Connor, an executive producer of The Dan Patrick Show, said on Friday. “There’s no atmosphere – you’ve got no crowd sound; the mics are all over the place. It’s terrible.”

Show host Dan Patrick concurred with this point, relaying that his wife walked by the television and thought something was amiss with the sound. When she asked Patrick what was happening, he replied that it was due to the presentation from Prime Video. Although most viewers ended up watching the game anyway, the inadequate soundscape detracted from the aura of the contest and dampened the viewing experience.

“I love [Kirk] Herbstreit [and] I love Al Michaels, but when I have the game on, do you ever have your stereo in your car and you have the bass and the treble set and somehow it gets reset – and everything’s reset to medium?,” Paul Pabst, an executive producer of The Dan Patrick Show, said. “You’re like, ‘Where’s the highs? Where’s the lows? It has that feeling.’”

The lack of dynamic contrast and aggregate timbre caused some viewers to connote that the broadcast sounds flat despite the stellar, highly-experienced commentary team. Improving on the sound and other customer feedback will be critical in incentivizing non-ardent fans to return to the property or try it altogether.

“We’ve created the atmosphere that is so good that you don’t even have to go to a game,” Patrick said. “With the sound of it, the TVs, [and] the quality… it’s almost a better experience sometimes when you’re sitting at home.”

In addition to watching the National Football League, Pabst frequently consumes college football on Saturdays, including the prime-time presentations. When he is viewing those games, he can feel the noise of the crowd permeating through the speakers and be part of the crowd.

“It’s thunderous,” Pabst said. “The crowd noise almost overwhelms [Chris] Fowler, sometimes in a good way, and it’s hard to tell what’s going on there.”

Finding games on Amazon Prime Video has been a difficult proposition for some users, evidenced by O’Connor describing how it took him 10 minutes to begin watching the Giants-49ers game last night. The game was broadcast regionally on FOX for those in the New York metropolitan area, but for O’Connor, he noticed that the network had the baseball contest between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies on instead.

“I look and I’m like, ‘I swear there was a game tonight,’ and I see it’s in the first quarter.’ What the hell is going on?,” thought O’Connor. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot Amazon was a thing; it’s just not a TV destination all the time for me.”