HENDERSON, Nev. — Make no mistake, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has been a big deal for a while.
He made a Pro Bowl in his third season, had his own reality dating show the next year and hosted Saturday Night Live last year after winning his second Super Bowl.
People knew him. But since he started dating megastar Taylor Swift last year, now everybody knows him. And he’s learned a big lesson from stepping fully into celebrity and seeing a surge of interest in his personal life over the last several months.
“That worldwide fame is a lot different than just being famous in Kansas City,” Kelce joked Tuesday.
He’s understating his own status — he has been a household name in the NFL for a decade and is headed for the Hall of Fame — but millions of Swifties and non-football fans have had their eye on him wondering if he’ll be the one to finally break Swift’s love losing streak.
Kelce has navigated this new world impressively. He always seems at ease with questions about Swift and the accompanying publicity that has engulfed the NFL, and he’s been as good as ever on the field.
The Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years, facing the 49ers on Sunday in Las Vegas, and as usual, Kelce is one of the biggest reasons why. He made his eighth consecutive Pro Bowl this season as the team’s leading receiver with 93 catches for 984 yards and five touchdowns. He caught three touchdown passes in the last two games to get the Chiefs here.
He’s the same old Travis, and that’s what he hopes his teammates and everyone else see.
“Buckle up, baby,” he said of managing the swarm of attention. “I’ve juggled the perception of my focus. I never want to make the people in the Kansas City Chiefs’ building feel that I wasn’t focused on the task at hand, and that’s winning football games.
“Knowing how much I love this game and I love coming into work and everything... being able to make sure everybody knows my focus is in the right area, especially when I’m in the building, and there’s no distractions, that’s been the biggest thing.”
He seems to have made his point.
“He’s been the same guy,” wide receiver Marquez Valdez-Scantling said. “He’s never let his outside stuff affect his play.
“It‘s not like he just became a celebrity yesterday. He’s been the best tight end in the history of football for years. He has a personal relationship outside of football — that’s normal, just like everybody else. He’s just living his life.”
Normal? Hardly.
Television networks began cutting to Swift during games since she first visited Arrowhead Stadium in September to watch Kelce’s Chiefs crush the Bears 41-10. After that, everyone waited anxiously to see if she showed up each week. Well, not everyone. But like it or not, the Swift and Kelce love story has taken over the season and surely will be a dominant part of the broadcast Sunday.
Their relationship so thoroughly infiltrated the season that conspiracy theories about the NFL rigging it for the Chiefs to make the Super Bowl got loud enough for commissioner Roger Goodell to be asked about them this week.
“There’s no way I could’ve scripted that,” he said, laughing. He called that idea “nonsense.”