A THIRD TIME FOR TAYLOR SWIFT, WITH BLACK BOOTS? YEP, A RELATIONSHIP
Don’t be absurd and say they’re testing a friendship — with two trips to Kansas City and another to New Jersey suggest she isn’t visiting — as her suite-shriek romps appear more passionate (?)
She has emerged three times to watch her dude, if that’s a way to put it, the latest Thursday night with Donna Kelce and another woman chomping a hot dog. Even if this was a same-day promotional hit for her theater excursion — “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” part of a $3 billion sales massacre — she isn’t wasting her time watching Travis Kelce play football to peddle more purchases.
“He is courting a certain pop star,” said Amazon’s Kaylee Hartung, as kickoff awaited America’s pervasive entertainer-noshes-athlete sideshow.
“Along with Mama Kelce,” said Al Michaels, who once greeted hockey players reaching a miracle and now, 43 years later, harbors a raw cultural moment.
Said Michaels later, after a long time ignoring Swift: “Looking on is his good buddy … and girlfriend,” meaning he finally beat Page Six with a gossip item.
Sometimes, no one has to say if a romance is real. A trio of opportunities with his mother in two NFL stadiums, with a black dress and red team jacket and black combat boots? That’s enough to say they’re feeling jitters, after Swift appeared the night before in Los Angeles for a movie premiere … that included Beyonce in the audience. None of us are geeky enough to ask how long it will endure. But the sensation remains authentic and will continue at least until she leaves for a stop in Argentina, after which we’ll wonder about the holidays and the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, assuming the fair-to-middling Kansas City Chiefs aren’t distracted by her continuing presence.
So far, they keep winning as she roars. When Kelce caught a 40-yard pass and brought it to the Denver 17, she stood in the suite, held her mouth and cheered in the first quarter. Nine targets, nine catches in space, and playing on a wrapped right ankle, the tight end carried on with help upstairs, as Swift hugged Patrick Mahomes’ wife after a deep throw near the end zone.
Get used to it: Taylor’s shrieks as Travis attacks his pay dirt. She has yet to say much about their relationship. Thus, we’ll listen to him.
“We’re learning with the paparazzi taking photos all over the place,” he said, in something I noted in a previous column. “But at the same time, what comes with it. You just have to keep living and enjoying the moments. You've got a lot of people that care about Taylor, and for good reason, so I've just got to keep living and learning and enjoying the moments. It's worldwide, man. Everybody's having fun with it.”
Fun is the truth, especially with warfare on the other side of the planet. We’re not looking for salamanders here, as one sports columnist pretends. We’re just watching Taylor and Travis, like kids at a high-school cafeteria. “It felt like I was on top of the world after the Super Bowl and right now even more on top of the world,” Kelce said. “At the end of the day, I have always been pretty good about compartmentalizing and staying focused in this building, so I’m just going to keep rolling with that. I think it’s always been that for me. No matter what’s going on in my life, good or bad. I know I brought this on myself. I’ve been fortunate to have fun with it. That’s all that really matters, that’s it’s not pissing anybody off at least, over here at least.”
He knows people will take shots. Already, he says television is “overdoing” the Swift angle, one reason Amazon may have laid a bit low. Aaron Rodgers has nothing else to do and took a dig, referring to him as “Mr. Pfizer” based on his COVID-19 commercial. Said Kelce, in jest, about Rodgers and the owners of the New York Jets: “It's Mr. Pfizer versus the Johnson and Johnson family over there. I got the vaccine and I got it because of keeping myself safe, keeping my family safe, the people in this building. I stand by it 100 percent. I'm fully comfortable with him calling me Mr. Pfizer.”
For now, he should be thankful Mahomes is his quarterback. Afterward, when Chiefs Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez asked him to do something for his daughter — “Tre Tay” he said, in a Kelce-Swift deal — Mahomes looked away kiddingly and deferred to his teammate. He threw another interception, which will have the cops after him, but it was forgotten in a 19-8 groaner. At 28, Mahomes is trying to win a third Super Bowl and third MVP award. He has thanked Kelce, often, for removing pressure from his life. Before long, he’ll be expected to overtake Jalen Hurts and name the San Francisco 49er — Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey — in solo honors. It’s only mid-October.
Enjoy how a team acclimates and a romance survives. Watch Kelce air more ads than Kevin Hart. I was there when the Chicago Bulls dealt with, among other issues, the pairing of Dennis Rodman with Madonna and Carmen Electra. Thanks to Michael Jordan, the dynasty got by.
By comparison, Taylor is Celine Dion.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.