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Saquon Barkley is wondering why Eagles fans had to be so mean to Taylor Swift.
During Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, Swift, who is famously dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, was shown on the jumbotron and got summarily booed by the crowd of majority Philly fans.
Barkley, the star Eagles running back, appeared on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show on Wednesday. Stern asked Barkley when he thought Swift and Kelce would get married.
“I have no idea. I will say this though. I will say this though. You know, I remember that they showed her on the jumbotron and she got booed. I don’t get it,” Barkley said. “I don’t get why she was getting hate there.”
Stern agreed, saying, “I didn’t like that either.”
“She’s there supporting her significant other and she’s made the game bigger,” Barkley continued. “You know, we’re all about, in football, we’re all about, you know, how can we expand the game and make it more, you know, internationally and we’re traveling to Brazil and we’re traveling to Mexico, and you know, apparently we’re traveling to Australia soon, so we’re trying to expand the game and…her being a part of it’s only helping that, so I don’t get the slack that she’s getting.”
Kevin Kinkead, the editor of the Philadelphia sports fan site Crossing Broad, provided a succinct response as to why Swift drew the boo birds.
“She [was] booed because the stadium was full of Eagles fans and she was cheering for the other team,” Kinkead tweeted.
Eagles fans have long had a reputation for hectoring rivals. They even booed Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott in 2023 when he was the recipient of the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which is bestowed upon players for exemplary community service.
Elsewhere in the conversation on SiriusXM, Stern prompted Barkley on whether Philadelphia fans were crazier than New York fans and about whether he gets mobbed.
“I don’t think you’re wrong where there’s no fans like Philly fans. I saw a clip the other day, you know, when we won and they were celebrating down Broad Street, and there were a couple people just riding horses down the street. And I’m just like, ‘Where do they find these horses?’” Barkley said.
“Like the things that they do. You know, I saw there was a young gentleman in a wheelchair and Philly fans had him in the wheelchair, and he’s crowd surfing. You don’t see that side of Philly fans a lot. The loving side. So definitely gotta shout out to them, but it’s, yeah, you can go. They don’t really mob you, but it’s love here.”
Barkley said that he always felt loved and supported in New York, but that “things didn’t end off on a great note.”
He recognized that his first season in Philadelphia went particularly well – he came within striking distance of Eric Dickerson’s all-time rushing yardage record, and the team won the Super Bowl – but was effusive in his praise of how he was received by the local community.
“To be able to come here and just the way how, you know, they’ve taken me in and my family in, and my daughter is the star here,” Barkley said. “They love my little daughter. So it’s been pretty cool.”
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