I know it’s a little confusing. I know some of you are against it. But if you just think about it, the megamerger of football god Travis Kelce and pop goddess Taylor Swift — “K-Tay,” as I call them (patent pending) — actually makes a lot of sense.
By Rick Reilly
They’re both 33, blue-eyed- and have perfect Colgate smiles. When they hurt, they “shake it off.” They both love catchy things — he, footballs; she, tunes.
They’re both at the top of their games and at the top of the tax brackets (although Travis’s $30 million looks a little puny next to Tay Tay’s $740 million.)
With one big difference: Kelce’s goal every year is to go to the Super Bowl (he’s won two) and Swift’s goal is not to go. She reportedly turned down NFL offers to do both the 2023 and 2024 halftime shows. As a make-good, she just handed the league tens of millions of new fans.
Both of these performers are absolutely indispensable to their teams. Kelce is football’s best tight end, and when he’s not in Kansas City’s lineup — as happened with the Chiefs’ opening loss to Detroit — their Superman quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, suddenly looked like the dry cleaners lost his cape. She’s the centerpiece of the 117-performance, 90-truck, record-smashing worldwide Eras Tour that would screech to a stop without her.
Before Swift turned up last Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium with Kelce’s mom, the only place Swifties and NFL maniacs might cross paths would be at the DMV. But now that glitter and goal posts have collided, here’s a little of what each side should know about the other.
Kelce: If this 6-5, 250-pound tight end keeps it up, he could go down as the greatest player at his position to ever put on a chinstrap. Kelce already has the most receiving yards in a season by a tight end, the most touchdowns in the playoffs by a tight end, and he’s the first person to ever wear a suit that looked like it’d been in an explosion at a Benjamin Moore factory.
Swift: She’s a 5-10 hit-monster in crystal-studded Louboutins. She has the most No. 1 albums by any woman in history, is about to break the record for the biggest-grossing concert tour ever and owns the record for crumpling famous boyfriends.
Oh, and the day after the breakup, she’ll have a No. 1 song out about it. There’s been Harry Styles (“I Knew You Were Trouble”), Joe Jonas (“Better Than Revenge”) and John Mayer (“Dear John”). I’ve already written her breakup song for Kelce. Here’s how it goes …
We just can’t fix this
A mess that can’t be mopped
You may have perfect hands
But this time you got dropped
Kelce is not exactly a wallflower. He’s the only man I know who’s dated women from all 50 states. That was the premise of a 2016 reality show called “Catching Kelce.” He wound up choosing Kentucky, though that needs an asterisk, since Guam, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia were cruelly excluded.
I love when universes collide like this in America: Marilyn Monroe (film) and Joe DiMaggio (baseball), Lindsey Vonn (skiing) and Tiger Woods (golf), Madonna (pop music) and Dennis Rodman (bridal wear).
Okay, none of those worked out, but this one has a chance because Taylor’s favorite number is 13 (she sometimes paints it on her hand) and Travis’s is 87 (his jersey), and that equals 100.
Besides, I want K-Tay to stick for one very good reason: They’re both loathed by right-wingers. She, for openly standing up against Donald Trump and for abortion rights. He, for appearing in coronavirus vaccine ads and taking a knee during the national anthem, the highest-profile White NFL player to do so.
In fact, if anybody should be worried about K-Tay, it’s Trump. These two have fan bases that are huge and devoted. Just from Swift attending that single Chiefs game, Kelce’s merchandise sales jumped 400 percent. Swift put out one Instagram story last week urging her fans to register to vote, Vote.org reported, and participation on the site jumped 1,226 percent in the next hour.
Between X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook, she has around 450 million followers (Kelce has “only” about 5 million). What if they decided a fun couples thing to do would be to … I don’t know … save democracy? K-Tay could stir up voters, from homecoming queens to assisted-living grandpas, from Castro Street to Wall Street, and rock polling places the way they rock stadiums.
That might be something even Trump couldn’t shake off.
