The Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce and the Taylor Swift are everywhere, and it seems like everyone has opinions. The Chiefs played the New York Jets this week and, since Taylor was rumored to be attending her second game in a row in a city full of celebrities, the notoriously high New York ticket prices skyrocketed even further. In attendance at the Chiefs/Jets game, Taylor’s entourage included Sabrina Carpenter, Ant-Man, Wolverine, Sansa Stark, and even more famous faces. When the first Chiefs’ touchdown was scored, the camera panned rather awkwardly to the box seats to show Taylor and her crew, even though it wasn’t Travis who scored. The NFL is capitalizing on this circus as any huge marketing team would– they even had “(Taylor’s Version)” in their Twitter bio last week. On his podcast this week, Kelce admitted that the NFL might be going a little overboard in promoting Taylor, and that he wishes she could just attend the game without it being made about her. Even political figures are commenting on their relationship. My social media timelines are flooded with pictures of him and them and I, as well as everyone else, am a little tired of it.
However, there is another side to this. This week my sister asked me what a tight end was, and we got to talking about Taylor and Travis as we watched football together for the first time in many years. My sister also got to explain to my dad why Taylor is re-recording her music, and they spent a long time talking about copyright laws and the value of negotiating your contracts. Several NFL commentators have gone viral for including their TSwift lyric puns in their commentary in the last two weeks, and my social media is overflowing. Not only with paparazzi photos and updates, but with stories just like mine. Fathers and daughters, sisters and friends, spouses and families are reconnecting through something as innocuous as a famous millennial and her new boyfriend. Worlds are colliding, and it’s so much fun.