Taylor Swift is the best thing that's ever happened to the NFL
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Around a week ago, Taylor Swift shocked me to my core.
Now, this is a very common thing for her to do. As someone who’s extremely invested in every waking moment of her life, you would think that I’m not-so-easily-surprised anymore.
However, I still find myself shocked when she announces the re-release of an album I knew was coming, when she shows up in New York even though she lives here, and when she does something like sing a surprise song (which she had done every single night), the element of surprise is never lost on me. So, when Taylor Swift shows up in a box at a Kansas City Chiefs game to root on her rumored boyfriend, Travis Kelce, my universe was bound to be sent of it’s usual path of orbit.
When rumors broke of these two earlier in September, I found myself slightly hard pressed to believe it. It wasn’t that long ago that she found herself in a media circus with the lead singer of The 1975, Matty Healy, which led me to believe that she would keep her next relationship under wraps for a while.
My girl has also categorically dated mysterious British boys for nearly the last ten years, from Tom Hiddleston who gave us the iconic I ❤️ TS t-shirt, to longtime (and who I believed to be her secret husband at some points) boyfriend Joe Alwyn, known mostly for mumbling his way through his role on Hulu’s Conversations With Friends, to aforementioned Matty Healy, Taylor loves London Boys so much she created an absolute banger about it.
With these two things, alongside the fact that I personally can’t think of a single athlete she’s been linked to, I didn’t necessarily find any credibility in the early Travis and Taylor rumors.
Then, Taylor did as she does best, and surprised us all in the Kelce box at the second Kansas City Chiefs home game of the season, sitting next to his mother. I don’t exactly feel the need to explain this to anyone, especially because the NFL has taken this saga and ran with it further than any running back ever could, so let’s bring ourselves to the point we’re at now: Taylor Swift has not only showed face at one game this year, but she traversed back to NYC, and filled a box full of her best friends and family at the game this weekend.
Even before this, I liked Travis Kelce. Like many of us, after the Super Bowl I started getting served a plethora of thirst traps and edits on TikTok of him, and I liked what I saw. His podcast with his brother is adorable, much like his mother, and he just seems like an all-around great guy.
After this, I’m entirely obsessed. I love Travis and Taylor. I love everything about it. I’m happy for him, I’m happy for her, I’m happy for his mother, I’m happy for his publicist, I’m happy for the NFL, I’m simply put, happy.
We’ve all seen the spikes in jersey sales, female viewership, and overall interest in the football universe rise. It’s undeniable the effects Taylor has had on the 2023-2024 season. Announcers cannot get through a single play without making some sort of song-related pun, she’s shown on the telecast after plays as if she’s an offensive coordinator, and she even went as far as to cause my roommate and I to turn on Sunday night’s game, just the two of us, for nearly a half hour.
This entire situation is so fabulously American that it could almost be considered camp. It’s the trope Taylor herself has been singing about since she was 15, with the star football player and “country girl” falling in love and riding off into the sunset. Literally, they’re riding off into the sunset:
The best part about it for me, and maybe not her, is that it’s so public. Travis publicly pursued her, he went to her concert first, made a friendship bracelet with his number on it to exchange, didn’t get the change, and vocalized on his podcast how bummed out he was, finally inviting her to watch him at Arrowhead Stadium like he had watched her. Watching this all come to fruition after the chasing and public fodder has me giddy, as if I’m watching a Netflix rom-com play out in real time.
All in all, I’m thrilled about the entire situation, and I’m glad that the entire country, if not the world is in on it together. Any day my dad calls me to discuss Taylor Swift is a great day for me, and I really feel like overall, this entire situation is bringing us all together. While some of the jokes and commercialization feel like real overkill, it’s definitely one way to get girls like me viewing Sunday Night Football (sorry Carrie Underwood).