Rachel Lindsay doesn’t love the idea of people tuning into Kansas City Chiefs games just to catch a glimpse of Taylor Swift.
“There’s no other emotion that comes out of me than hating it,” Lindsay, 38, said on the Thursday, October 12, episode of the “The View Behind the Table” podcast of the recent coverage of Swift, 33, at rumored boyfriend Travis Kelce’s games. “I love this game, I love the sport. Obviously, we’ve been familiar with Travis Kelce since he entered the league.”
Lindsay, who rose to fame on The Bachelor and went on to become season 13 lead for The Bachelorette, is a big sports fan — and is even in a celebrity fantasy football league alongside John Legend, David Spade, Darius Rucker and others. She confessed she is a fan of Kelce, 34, and “even watched his dating show” when it aired in 2016.
Swift has attended three Chiefs games to support Kelce in recent weeks after the tight end attempted to give the musician his phone number at The Eras Tour in July.
“It’s just exhausting the way people are, for me, it’s a little obnoxious, the Taylor Swift fans. Love that you’re into the sport, but they’re not — they’re into the Taylor–Travis Kelce of it,” Lindsay explained on Thursday. “It’s too much information. The media is playing into it too much. People are coming to games wearing shirts that say ‘Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.’ It’s just a little disrespectful to the sport and to the game and even to Travis Kelce.”
While Lindsay acknowledged she was being “negative” about the spectacle going on between Swift and Kelce, she does see how the NFL player’s latest romance has helped boost his popularity.
“This has been amazing for Travis. He’s got more Instagram followers … he’s crossed over into a whole new audience,” she noted. “This is fantastic for him but I don’t want to constantly see flashes of her with Donna Kelce in the suite and whatever famous friends she decides to bring.”
On Thursday night, Swift watched the Chiefs beat the Denver Broncos alongside Travis’ parents, Donna and Ed.
Two weeks prior, she brought Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and more to MetLife Stadium to see the Kansas City team beat the New York Jets. More than 27 million viewers tuned in to watch that game making it the most-watched Sunday TV show since Super Bowl LVII, according to NBC Sports.
Sports broadcaster Al Michaels revealed on Thursday that the Thursday Night Football production team met ahead of the game to discuss their plan on how the network wanted to cover Swift at the game.
“Our crew talked about it this morning,” Michaels, 78, said to Sports Illustrated at the time. “You can’t make a sideshow the show. The vast majority of the audience are tuning in to watch a football game. There are people, I don’t know how many, it could be a sizable number, but it’s certainly not a majority, that if you trained the camera on her all night long, they’d be satisfied with that. This is not what we’re doing to do.”
While neither Travis nor Swift have confirmed their relationship status, Lindsay does believe the twosome are together — and a good match.
“The women love Travis Kelce, why would she not fall for him? And vice versa,” Lindsay shared, “She’s a talented, beautiful woman. I get it. I just don’t need it in my face all the time.”
