Even Travis Kelce thinks the Taylor Swift coverage is too much
Travis Kelce knows the NFL is "just trying to have fun with it," but he sounds overwhelmed by the attention on his relationship with Taylor Swift
There is perhaps no one more newsworthy these days than Taylor Swift, whose current fame has somehow exceeded her previous peak back in the 1989 era. If dating Matty Healy earlier this year caused a pop culture stir, her budding relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is a veritable earthquake. All sorts of brands are taking advantage, including the National Football League. It’s all becoming a bit much, at least in Travis Kelce’s opinion.
“I think it’s fun when they show who all is at the game. I think it brings a little bit more to the atmosphere, brings a little bit more to what you’re watching,” Travis said to his brother Jason Kelce on their New Heights podcast (via Deadline). “But at the same time, I think they’re overdoing it a little bit for sure. Especially my situation.”
Jason speculated that “the NFL is not used to celebrities coming to the games,” which seems untrue given the amount of celebrity football fans. Meanwhile, Travis acknowledged that the league is “just trying to have fun with it.”
For its part, the league defended itself in a statement to People. “We frequently change our bios and profile imagery based on what’s happening in and around our games, as well as culturally,” it said in reference to changing its social media presence to pictures of Swift. “The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce news has been a pop cultural moment we’ve leaned into in real time, as it’s an intersection of sport and entertainment, and we’ve seen an incredible amount of positivity around the sport.”
The statement concluded, “The vast majority of our content has remained focused on the game, our players and variety of other initiatives, including our Toy Story Funday Football alt-cast, the international games and more.”
That may be news to some of the fans who have started complaining about Too Much Taylor Swift. Earlier this week, a Barstool Sports podcast went viral for its commentary on the phenomenon, in which co-host Dan “Big Cat” Katz said (among other slightly misogynistic things), “Taylor Swift is a problem for the NFL. We have to unite as a group of fans. We can’t let this happen. She’s got to stop going to games.” Katz posted the clip to social media with the caption, “If Taylor Swift is going to be taking over our Sunday’s I’m going to need to see a sex tape.”
West Side Story star Rachel Zegler reposted the clip on X/Twitter, writing, “it’s not news that the media is particularly (and unwarrantedly) cruel to taylor swift but the way men feel entitled to speak about women, their bodies, and their sex lives needs to be seriously evaluated.” She added, “you will never see people speaking this way about a man. that goes for a lot of different scenarios. we do not pick apart men’s attitudes and relationships the way we do women’s. and it’s not always just men who speak this way about us. women can and do, too. it sucks.”