Next time your family debates whether the NFL is giving Taylor Swift too much screen time during a Kansas City Chiefs game, let them know that she would like to be excluded from this narrative.
“I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in. There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once,” Swift, 33, said in her TIME Person of the Year cover story published on Wednesday, December 6. “I’m just there to support Travis [Kelce]. I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads and Chads.”
Swift has been spotted at five of Kelce’s games since September, confirming to TIME that the twosome were officially a couple when she went to her first game on September 24.
“Football is awesome, it turns out,” she “playfully” told the magazine. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.”
The NFL hasn’t been shy about capitalizing off of Swift and Kelce’s relationship, using her music for promos, making puns about Kelce’s stats with references to Swift’s songs (he plays better when he’s at the game instead of “left to his own devices”) and panning to the 12-time Grammy winner multiple times throughout the broadcast. While some football fans have complained about the coverage, the league has embraced the ratings bump.
“They seem to be enjoying their relationship. That’s great in and of itself, but it has connected more fans of Taylor’s and more fans of the NFL in some ways,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said during a CBS interview last month. “[Swift is] an unbelievable artist, obviously, Travis is an unbelievable player and I think it’s great for the league to have that kind of attention — so we welcome it.”
While Travis’ brother, Jason Kelce, said on their “New Heights” podcast that the NFL is “overdoing it,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy previously assured the Associated Press that the romance was “not orchestrated by the NFL.” He added in October: “You’ve got a lot of people that care about Taylor and for good reason.”
Travis, 34, has also adjusted to the attention.
“We’re learning with the paparazzi just taking photos from all over the place, it comes with it. You’ve got a lot of people that care about Taylor, and for good reason,” he said during a press conference in October. “You just have to keep living, learning and enjoying the moments. At the end of the day, I have always been good at compartmentalizing and being able to stay focused. I will just keep rolling with that.”
More recently, the tight end spoke about the pressure not to “f–k up” the relationship.
“Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them … I’ve never dealt with it,” he said in his WSJ. Magazine profile last month. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it. … The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that, I better not be the one acting all strange.”
He added: “Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor is, has been f–king mind-blowing. I’m learning every day.”
