Has Taylor Swift ever been more popular, more all-powerful, more white Beyoncé than she is right now? She’s in the middle of an era-defining tour that is literally called the Eras Tour. A concert-film version of the show is about to arrive in theaters nationwide—she dropped the news a few weeks ago, and within hours, Hollywood studios were scrambling to get their movies out of her way. The bracelets are everywhere. And now, to her vast dominion, she has added untold millions of football-loving (mostly) men, thanks to her escalating flirtations with the Kansas City Chiefs’ sexy goofus tight end, Travis Kelce.
Quick recap: On the July 26 episode of his popular podcast, New Heights—which he co-hosts with his brother, a star offensive lineman with the Philadelphia Eagles—Kelce lamented that he’d gone to Swift’s concert at Arrowhead Stadium, in Kansas City, and was hoping to pass along a bracelet with his number on it, but she blew him off. (Actually, it’s unclear if she blew him off or just had no idea who he was.) In any case, he confessed to being “butthurt” by the rejection. But he didn’t give up. This month, on an episode of The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN, Kelce revealed that he’d invited Swift to the Chiefs’ upcoming home game against the Chicago Bears. (“I told her that I’ve seen her rock a stage in Arrowhead, and she might have to come see me rock the stage at Arrowhead,” he said.) This time, she accepted.
Swift took in the game from the Kelce family’s box, wearing a red Chiefs jacket and chatting it up with his mom, Donna, until Kelce caught a game-sealing touchdown pass in the third quarter. That’s when Swift went berserk, just like everyone else in the box. Though we couldn’t hear her voice through the glass, we could all read her lips as she battle-cried “Let’s fucking go!” in a manner so pure and primal that it genuinely seemed like she’d done it before. She did it like an actual football fan.
At this point, mind you, it was still unclear if they’d ever been alone in a room together, or even met in person yet. Whatever. It was game on. The #Swelce hashtag had already been deployed. They either reconnected or finally met while leaving the stadium on the way to a postgame party. He was dressed as a fashionable house painter. At one point, she was photographed with her arm around him. The next day, his jersey sales went up 400 percent.
Maybe they’ll fall in love. Maybe they’ll have babies and co-host Saturday Night Live and grow old together.
No, this is going to end badly. Sorry to be a party pooper. But this isn’t really about Travis and Taylor at all. It’s about a sports media cycle that simply cannot coexist with the gossip-manufacturing industry—two unruly mobs smacking together like 300-pound linemen. This is more than any budding romance can withstand, particularly one that’s still manifesting itself into being.
Anyone who watches sports knows that the sports-talk industry is round-the-clock savagery, aired at a deafening volume on 10 TV screens at a time in every bar across the country. McAfee, a former NFL punter turned YouTube livestreamer who just ported his show over to ESPN for a reported $85 million, and who speaks to an audience of nearly 2 million people a day for three hours at a time, did segments on Kelce and Swift every day this week. On Wednesday—day three of the whole saga—he posted a segment on YouTube titled “Taylor Swift Fans Have Already Turned Around, Hate Travis Kelce?! Pat McAfee Reacts.”
The real variable here isn’t necessarily Kelce or Swift. It’s the Chiefs, who are looking a bit wobbly so far this season, their 41–10 drubbing of the dreadful Bears notwithstanding. An NFL team hasn’t won back-to-back Super Bowls in nearly two decades, and there’s a reason for that: Football is violent, exhausting, and unpredictable. Guys get injured, key players move to other teams, and everyone who stays is a year older and 20 percent less hungry. That includes Kelce, now 33, a two-time Super Bowl winner and future first-ballot Hall of Famer who’s running out of prizes to play for. The Chiefs are going to struggle at times this season, and when they do, illogical or not, fans will blame the new variable—in this case, the pop star. It’s a tale as old as Yoko Ono.
Distraction will be the operative word in Kansas City, and across the NFL, for the entire season. Is Travis Kelce focused enough on football? Are his teammates getting tired of the media circus around the team? Is Taylor Swift going to take down a juggernaut? Listen closely and you can already hear Stephen A. Smith clearing his throat. It’ll be hard for Kelce to claim he’s not distracted when his brother is asking him about his new girlfriend every week on their podcast. And to the question of whether his teammates will grow tired of answering questions about Travis and Taylor: Yes. Yes, they will. Especially after losses.
And heaven forbid Kelce should get hurt—Swift will never shake that jinx. The NFL is cruel that way. If recent history’s a guide, the Chiefs are no sure thing to make the playoffs, and a strong bet to get bounced early. If that happens, their fans will demand a human sacrifice. Just because it’s a lovefest at Arrowhead now doesn’t mean Chiefs fans won’t boo her face on the Jumbotron in December if they’re getting stomped by the Buffalo Bills. Let us never underestimate the potent combination of deranged fandom and basic sexism. Some Swifties already appear to have their guard up, judging from the watchful social-media rumors about Kelce’s past infidelities.
Swift, by all accounts, does not appreciate her business getting aired in public. Kelce, meanwhile, once starred in a reality dating show on E! called Catching Kelce. He likes to talk. He has reporters with microphones in front of him multiple times a week. His office is a locker room. A relationship with Kelce would be a very different experience from the six years Swift spent dating Joe Alwyn, a soft-spoken actor who was in stuff you haven’t seen.
For every irrational reaction, there’s an equally irrational counterreaction, so whenever Kelce’s fans start to sour on Swift, for whatever dumb reason, her fans will dutifully sour on him in return. Soon the culture will divide into warring factions, #TeamTrav and #TeamTay. If it seems like a reach to suggest that romantic melodrama can derail a football season, look at Tom Brady’s haggard face at the end of preseason last summer, after his split from Gisele Bundchen. (“I'm 45 years old, man,” he said after reporters asked him if he was, like, okay. “There’s a lot of shit going on.”) Bucs fans on social media handled this unfortunate news with all the civility you’d expect. Most of it was harmlessly lunkheaded. Some of it was vicious. An ex-teammate known for erratic outbursts even shared on social media a shoddily edited nude photo of Bundchen.
This is probably not where we’re headed. But we should brace for a stream of crude jokes and pigheaded monologuing. The word out of Swift’s camp is that she’ll be attending the Chiefs game today at the Meadowlands against the New York Jets, guaranteeing at least another week of flood-the-zone coverage on ESPN and across TikTok. The Chiefs are heavy favorites in the game … but what if the Jets somehow won with Taylor in the house? Consider the camera shots: the cuts to her face in the luxury box, the dissections of her body language toward Donna.
At some point, Swift will skip a Chiefs game—she does have a job, you know; she’s way more famous than Travis Kelce—and the groundless speculation about why will fill yet another week. This is what we do. We devour. And human relationships that start out as content aren’t exactly planted in fertile soil. Soon enough the #Swelce era will likely be a bittersweet memory, nothing but a faded Chiefs sweater gathering dust in a drawer.