In July, Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, scored tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play. He wanted to meet her—and why not? He’s a stud: a two-time Super Bowl champion, eight-time Pro Bowler, maybe the greatest tight end in history. Strong jaw. He made some friendship bracelets with his phone number on them. But, when he tried to see Swift and give them to her, he was rebuffed, he said later, on “New Heights,” the podcast he hosts with his brother, the All-Pro Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce. “I was a little butt-hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her,” he said.
Kelce is not easily deterred. He was the star of “Catching Kelce,” on E!, in which women from all fifty states competed for his love. He picked a winner, but the relationship didn’t last. The show was cancelled after one season. And Swift, to judge from her past several boyfriends—the slim British singer Matty Healy, the slim British actor Joe Alwyn, the slim British actor Tom Hiddleston, the slim British d.j. Calvin Harris, the slim British actor and musician Harry Styles—does not usually go for beefy, red-blooded American guys. But, in June, it was reported that Swift and Healy had broken up. And what’s adversity to a football player? Just another name for opportunity, they like to say.
In July, Kelce attended the première of the Netflix documentary “Quarterback,” and brought his mother, Donna, as his date. Cute! He plays an unusual role in pop culture—marginal, maybe, but oddly appealing, like Gronk with some of the weirdness smoothed away. Later in the summer, he traded his beard for a trim mustache, which was apparently in homage to the Chiefs’ coach, Andy Reid. Reid looks like a bespectacled walrus. Kelce looks like a good time. On the Kelces’ podcast, Jason asked Travis whether Swift liked his stache. “We’re not gonna bring up Taylor Swift in this episode,” Travis said, “but something tells me she’s gonna like it.”
Swift was busy conquering football stadiums across the country, transforming bastions of American masculinity into sequined seas of feminine energy. But the rumor machine was working: the Messenger reported that “Taylor and Travis have been quietly hanging out.” Before the Chiefs played the Jacksonville Jaguars, in mid-September, the N.F.L. Network’s Rich Eisen built a pre-game show peppered with Swift references. When Kelce pulled in a touchdown pass, the CBS announcer Ian Eagle was ready with the Easter egg: “Kelce finds a blank space for the score.” Jason Kelce was asked about the rumors in a radio interview. “I think he’s doing great, and I think it’s all a-hundred-per-cent true,” he said.
The next day, Travis Kelce went on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “I told her, ‘I’ve seen you rock the stage in Arrowhead—you might have to come see me rock the stage at Arrowhead, and we can see which one’s a little more lit,’ ” he said.
Was it a stunt? Was it love? Is there a difference? On Sunday, when the Chiefs took on the Chicago Bears, there she was, in the flesh, in his suite, next to his mom. Swift wore a white tank top and a red Chiefs jacket. Her red lips formed a perfect “O” when she cheered. Her red nails flashed when she clapped or clutched her hand to her chest. She looked delighted. Donna looked delighted. The dude to her left, whom she gave a celebratory chest bump, looked delighted. Everyone in her orbit, in fact—the crowd, the commentators, the Chiefs players, the television audience, the millions of Swifties dispersed around the globe, the millions of people who were only now learning that Swift has a thing for friendship bracelets—seemed vaguely delighted by her presence. (Except, maybe, for the Chicago Bears. It is not quite clear what the Bears were doing there.) Kelce scored, and the cameras flashed to Swift jumping up and down, cheering. “Let’s fucking go!” she yelled. The clip immediately went viral.
“I heard she was in the house,” Patrick Mahomes said, after the game. He added, “I knew I had to get it to Trav. . . . I think he wanted to get in the end zone just as much as all the Swifties wanted him to.”
Meanwhile, a number of Swifties were watching at home and learning about football. One posted, on Twitter, a “FOOTBALL EXPLAINER FOR THOSE CONFUSED,” which noted how many points you got for touchdowns and field goals and how many downs (or “tries”) each team had to get ten yards (“basically all you need to know”). The Swiftie added: “we have been made to watch football for taylor like 4 times this year and i tweet this every time.”
This, of course, is why Swift and Kelce are a dream pairing for the N.F.L.: it’s an alliance with the only cultural force in America bigger than itself. On TikTok, the official N.F.L. account changed its bio to read, “Taylor was here.” On sports radio, in Boston, the legendary coach Bill Belichick said that Swift would be the biggest catch of Kelce’s career.
She was spotted walking out with Kelce after the game. He wore an off-white getup that looked as if it had had a rough encounter with a freshly painted blue wall. Swift wore her Chiefs jacket tied around her waist. The match makes a kind of sense: Swift is perhaps the world’s most successful bard of big feelings, and what is the N.F.L. if not a racket to let grown men cry?
“I set them up,” Andy Reid deadpanned after the game. It seemed about as plausible as anything else. Swift and Kelce were spotted driving off, in a convertible, top down. ♦
