“I don’t like being the Centre of attention all the time, give me some space” Travis kelce blast a media reporter trying to record him on the street

If you’re a football fan, you’ve probably heard more about Taylor Swift in the last two weeks than you have in your life to date. If you’re a Swiftie, you’ve probably heard more about tight ends, offensive linemen, and Kansas City than you ever dreamed you would.

Arguably the two biggest monocultures left standing — Taylor Swift and the NFL — have collided with a monumental impact, all because Taylor has apparently begun a relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. By now, even if you’re not in either fandom, you’ve likely at least heard about how Kelce (pronounced “Kell-see”) attempted to woo Swift on the Eras tour by giving her a friendship bracelet with his phone number written on it. Next thing we knew, the two were “quietly hanging out.”

Then Taylor showed up to a late-September Chiefs game to cheer on Travis (who later confirmed he’d invited her), and it was a whole new ball game — and not just because the players were openly transfixed by the megastar in the stands. Overnight, the NFL and Kelce himself became the hot topic of conversation among people who’d never thought about football before, while sportscasters found themselves injecting Swift references into their sports roundups.

The media frenzy around Kelce and Swift ballooned, along with the memes and the endless references to Swifties invading sports fandom. Countless articles explaining football for Swift fans began circulating the takesphere.

When the Chiefs’ next game against the New York Jets rolled around, the hype over Taylor/Travis (Traylor? Tayvis? The ship nomenclature is very important!) was so intense that the NFL created a viral promo for the game that used Swift’s “Welcome to New York” as the backdrop and slyly declared the matchup to be

“Taylor made for Sunday night.” And they were right: Swift showed up to the game with a whole crew of celebrity friends including Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, and Hugh Jackman (has Hugh Jackman ever even been to a football game before?!), all of whom hung out with Kelce’s mom in the VIP box, cheering on the Chiefs while every eye was trained on Taylor.

The October 1 Chiefs/Jets game, as an NBC press release subsequently crowed, was not only must-see TV, but the most-watched game of the year since the Super Bowl. As Vox’s Emily Stewart put it, “The buzz is inescapable, whether you’re a Taylor Swift fan, an NFL fan, both, or neither. Kelce’s jersey sales have spiked, as has the number of his Instagram followers … The social media chatter is endless. The media coverage is breathless. Seemingly everyone has weighed in.”