Millions of American televisions will show constant shots of Taylor Swift and potentially President Donald Trump on Sunday, with a historic football game going on in between.
When Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs take the field at the Caesars Superdome for Super Bowl LIX, they will be the first players in NFL history to play in a third straight Super Bowl after winning the last two.
They are currently 1.5-point favorites to become the first team ever to win three straight. If they do win, it would be their fourth in an era dating back to 2020 and fifth all-time.
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They would join the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots as the only teams with at least five Super Bowls.
And they’re doing it as the team with the largest following on TikTok and YouTube, as Swift’s relationship with Kelce has catapulted the franchise into a pop culture phenomenon.
However, many NFL fans have had it with the Chiefs.
The constant shots and conversations involving Swift, a growing history of controversial referee decisions and the general animosity that follows any team that wins too much has made the Chiefs the NFL’s “villain.”
How did they get here?
New Year’s, 2012
On Dec. 30, 2012, the then-defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 42-7. Andy Reid was fired as Eagles head coach the very next day, on New Year’s Eve.
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid, center, leaves the field after a game against the New York Giants on Dec. 30, 2012 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Giants won 42-7. (Hunter Martin/Philadelphia Eagles/Getty Images)
Reid was booted out of Philadelphia after a 14-year stint that included plenty of wins but none in the Super Bowl. He was dubbed one of the NFL’s most beloved coaches, but in terms of championships, he was just a lovable loser.
It all came crashing down on him after his son, Garrett Reid, died the previous August.
But the coach wasted no time getting back to work. He was hired as the Chiefs’ head coach just one day after getting fired by the Eagles – the first day of 2013.
That day, the Chiefs franchise changed forever.
The 2013 Draft: Travis Kelce’s Big Break
The Chiefs were one of the only teams to have a worse season than the Eagles in 2012. As a result, Kansas City had the first pick in the 2013 NFL Draft.
Reid’s very first draft as Chiefs coach saw the franchise take offensive tackle Eric Fisher with the first pick. However, the most consequential pick for the Chiefs that draft didn’t come until the third round, when they selected Kelce, a mid-round tight end prospect out of the University of Cincinnati.
Travis Kelce of the Cincinnati Bearcats reacts after scoring the game winning touchdown against the Duke Blue Devils during their game at Bank of America Stadium on Dec. 27, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
At that time, the notion that Kelce could become one of the most accomplished tight ends in NFL history and boyfriend to Swift was a pipe dream at best. He was an underdog from a blue-collar Ohio family and missed out on a whole year of college football after getting suspended by his own program for using marijuana.
On his podcast “New Heights,” Kelce once mentioned that his marijuana-induced suspension was questioned by scouts when he tried out at the 2013 NFL combine.
“At the combine, I had some bad interviews,” Kelce said. “The [Dallas] Cowboys, they were kind of pressing me about having this red flag of missing a year.”
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But Kelce said he had a confident message ready for any of the teams that wanted to use it against him.
“I basically just said, ‘If you guys think I’m gonna be that kind of guy, or you’re questioning if I’m still that person after everything that I’ve battled through to get to where I am now from missing a season, then you guys (should) probably go somewhere else and pick somebody else.’”
The Chiefs’ decision to overlook Kelce’s marijuana past and draft him anyway changed everything.
It changed everything for the franchise as a whole in the long run, both on and off the field.
The 2013 Season: An Immediate Culture Shift
Reid and Kelce’s first season in Kansas City marked an immediate turnaround from the franchise’s disastrous 2012. Reid set a new tone in town right away. They raced out to the best start in the league, winning their first nine games, which included a revenge victory in Philadelphia for the coach.
Still, that year was an early lesson in the limitations a team faces without an elite quarterback.
Former Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, who came to Kansas City after a disappointing stint as the No. 1 pick with the San Francisco 49ers, did enough to help make the Chiefs make a massive leap from the year before. But Smith couldn’t do enough to make the Chiefs competitive with Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos for the AFC West title. And when the Chiefs did make the playoffs as a wild card team, they gave up one of the biggest comebacks in playoff history to Andrew Luck’s Indianapolis Colts.
The Chiefs were on the wrong end of the quarterback comparisons that year, and it would be a few more years before they were on the right one.
The 2014 Draft: Dodging Johnny Football
Reid and the Chiefs may have gone into the 2014 draft with the hope of drafting a franchise quarterback.
Former Heisman winner Johnny Manziel was one of the most exciting but uncertain quarterback prospects in 2014. The Chiefs apparently had interest and already had a history of overlooking past character concerns for the right talent based on their decision with Kelce.
Manziel previously told Fox News Digital that he had been in close communication with the Chiefs during the draft process that year. Manziel said he and his agent believed Kansas City was the quarterback’s “floor” on draft night. Manziel was one pick away from falling to the Chiefs at the 23rd overall pick, and potentially altering the course of history.
But just one pick before that, Reid’s old team prevented it from happening.
The Cleveland Browns struck a trade with the Eagles for the 22nd pick, and Manziel went to Cleveland. Manziel went on to have one of the most disappointing and dysfunctional NFL careers of any Heisman winner in history.
And the Chiefs stayed the course to becoming what they are today.
The 2016 Season: Division Dominance Begins
After Manning’s retirement from the NFL following the 2015 season, marking a steep decline for the defending Super Bowl champion Broncos, a power vacuum opened in the AFC West.
For much of the 2016 season, it seemed the Oakland Raiders, led by a young Derek Carr, were destined to take the throne in the division that year. But when Carr suffered a season-ending injury in the second-to-last game of the season, an opportunity opened for the Chiefs.
Kansas City won their final game of the season while Oakland lost, as the Chiefs took over first place and won their first division title since 2010. It was a crown they haven’t let go of since, as they’ve won the division every year since then.
That season also saw Kelce make his first push into pop culture by publicizing his dating, seven full years before dating Swift. The tight end launched his own dating show, “Catching Kelce” on the E! Network, which launched in November of that year. The show featured a roster of women competing for Kelce’s romantic interest, but it only lasted one season after disappointing ratings.
Kelce has since said he wishes that the show be “forgotten.”
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The 2017 Draft: Enter Patrick Mahomes
Reid managed to get the Chiefs to the playoffs nearly every year with Smith at quarterback, but the ceiling on the team with Smith became more apparent each time.
They couldn’t get past the divisional round.
However, their opportunity to change their quarterback fortunes came in the 2017 draft.
Three years after possibly denying Manziel to the Chiefs, the Browns passed on Mahomes with the No. 1 pick in the 2017 draft. The Chicago Bears traded up for the No. 2 pick, needing a quarterback, and also passed on Mahomes in favor of Mitchell Trubisky.
Mahomes fell all the way to the 10th pick, which was owned by the Buffalo Bills, who also needed a quarterback. Buffalo made the trade to send Mahomes to Kansas City. Buffalo has lost four playoff games to Mahomes since then.
The Kansas City Chiefs selected Patrick Mahomes of Texas Tech with the 10th pick in the 2017 NFL Draft at the 2017 NFL Draft Theater on April 27, 2017 in Philadelphia. (Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The nine teams that passed on Mahomes may have believed the low marks on his scouting report that claimed he developed some “bad habits” and “lacked discipline” as a passer in college, despite possessing supreme talent.
At that time, Mahomes was also known as the son of Pat Mahomes Sr., who was a pitcher on multiple MLB teams in the 1990s and early 2000s. Mahomes Sr. even wound up on the “lovable loser” New York Mets in 2000, who went to the World Series against the 1990s dynasty New York Yankees. The younger Mahomes was just 6 years old that year.
But Mahomes’ father was left off the Mets’ playoff roster, and the Yankees, then known as the “Evil Empire,” went on to beat the Mets and win a third straight World Series championship and the fourth of an era.
When Mahomes was drafted by the Chiefs in April 2017, it put him in a position to eventually claim that very same type of hardware this upcoming Sunday.
The 2018 Season: A New Sheriff in Town
After a year of sitting behind Smith as a backup, Mahomes took the reins as the Chiefs starting quarterback. He changed the fortunes of the franchise immediately. In his first three career starts, he threw 13 touchdown passes without a single interception.
Mahomes went on to win league MVP and earn the Chiefs the No. 1 seed in the AFC. In his first playoff start, the young quarterback helped Reid avenge his first playoff collapse with the Chiefs in 2013, by defeating Luck’s Colts 31-13 without any threat of a comeback.
Kansas City reached the AFC title game for the first time since 1993, where the league’s last evil empire awaited them.
Tom Brady’s New England Patriots went into a freezing cold Arrowhead Stadium and just edged out the Chiefs in an overtime thriller. It crushed the hearts of Chiefs fans in attendance who were dreaming of their first Super Bowl trip since 1969.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, #15, stiff arms New England Patriots strong safety Patrick Chung, #23, as he rolls out in the third quarter of the AFC Championship Game between the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs on Jan. 20, 2019 at Arrowhead Stadium. (Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire)
And similar to what happened when the Yankees beat his father’s Mets to win a third straight World Series, Mahomes’ first playoff loss to Brady sent the Patriots to the Super Bowl for the third straight year. Mahomes was forced to watch as a losing opponent, as he entered his first offseason after playoff heartbreak.
Super Bowl LIV: The First Taste of Championship
The Chiefs fans who had their hearts broken by the Patriots didn’t have to wait long for their long-awaited Super Bowl appearance.
Mahomes and Kelce came right back in the 2019 season and picked up where they left off. And this time, they didn’t even have to deal with Brady and the Patriots, who lost in the Wild Card round in Brady’s last game as a Patriot.
So the Chiefs picked up the mantle of the NFL’s dynasty, winning Super Bowl LIV over the San Francisco 49ers in the final big game before the COVID-19 pandemic. It broke Kansas City’s 50-year Super Bowl drought and elevated the franchise in the pop culture sphere as well.
Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid victorious, holding up the Vince Lombardi trophy after winning Super Bowl LIV against the San Francisco 49ers at Hard Rock Stadium. (Simon Bruty /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)
The whole country seemed to rally behind Kansas City, celebrating the small market underdog that finally got over the hump. Reid became a central figure in this celebration, as his two-decades-long coaching career had finally been validated with a Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Mahomes went on to sign a historic 10-year contract extension the following July, ensuring that the prime years of his career would be with the Chiefs. Just one month later, he got engaged to his now-wife Brittany, who had already been pregnant since May.
Kelce went on to appear as a fictionalized version of himself in the first episode of the comedy series “Moonbase 8” later that year.
And the whole country got a blitz of commercials during the pandemic that featured the Chiefs stars and Reid, in a marketing strategy that has only become more prominent since then.
It was all just a modest start of an emerging phenomenon.
Super Bowl LV: A Historic Humbling
The Chiefs were looking to get a quick start on their dynasty when they made it back to the Super Bowl in the 2020 season.
But this time, they weren’t able to get around Brady.
Brady and his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, met Mahomes and the Chiefs in Tampa Bay for a historic Super Bowl overshadowed by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And it ended up being the most lopsided Super Bowl since then, as Brady and the Bucs won 31-9.
It was a dark footnote in the Chiefs dynasty, as Reid’s son and Chiefs assistant coach, Britt Reid, was in a car crash just days before the game.
Mahomes’ loss to Brady, whom he had suffered his only two playoff losses to, gave Brady his seventh Super Bowl and created a wide gap for Mahomes to catch up to if he wanted to surpass him.
But that didn’t stop Mahomes from trying.
The Chiefs will take on the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. The game can be streamed on Tubi for free. (Tubi)
The 2022 Season: Getting Back
A loss to Brady in Super Bowl LV and then a stunning playoff loss to Joe Burrow’s Bengals in the following year’s AFC championship game left some wondering if a Chiefs dynasty would ever materialize, especially after the team lost superstar wide receiver Tyreek Hill in the 2022 offseason.
Hill was instrumental to the Chiefs’ success during the three years of the Mahomes era.
Meanwhile, Kelce parted ways with a big part of his team off the field. In May 2022, he broke up with his ex-girlfriend, Instagram model Kala Nicole. The two had been together since 2017 after Nicole reportedly started their relationship by DMing him on Instagram.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga, File)
But Mahomes and Kelce sought to prove they would be just fine without Hill in 2022, and soon enough, Kelce proved to be pretty fine without Nicole.
Mahomes replicated his MVP season from 2018, winning the honor for the second time in his career, leading the Chiefs to a 14-3 record and the top seed in the AFC.
In the playoffs, they got their rematch with Burrow and the Bengals. Mahomes, with a sprained ankle, led his team to an avenging 23-20 win, setting up a game-winning field goal on a hurt ankle.
By that point, Brady was officially done playing, for good (probably).
For Mahomes, that meant a chance to really lay down the law about who was in charge in the NFL now. He saw that kind of authority in his life from the other side, from Brady just years earlier. Maybe he even saw it from Derek Jeter and the Yankees if he and his dad watched the World Series in 2000, even after his dad didn’t make the Mets’ postseason roster.
For Reid, a Super Bowl matchup against the Eagles, the team that fired him after that loss to the Giants on New Year’s Eve in 2012, waited on the other side.
And for Kelce, a chance to impress the world, and maybe one of the world’s famous women, was hanging out there too.
Super Bowl LVII: The Slippery Showdown
The Chiefs won one of the all-time thrilling Super Bowl games in league history in Super Bowl LVII. A 38-35 win over the Eagles, on a last-second kick by Harrison Butker, went down as one of the all-time modern classics.
And to many, it was an all-time controversy.
The playing surface at State Farm Stadium in Arizona was specially curated in an $800,000 operation by the NFL to provide natural grass for the game.
Multiple Eagles players complained to reporters about the surface being slippery and affecting their performance after the game, including Jordan Mailata and Hassan Reddick.
Even Chiefs defensive lineman Frank Clark told reporters the field “was kind of terrible.”
Haason Reddick, #7 of the Philadelphia Eagles, pressures Patrick Mahomes, #15 of the Kansas City Chiefs, during the second quarter of Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium on Feb. 12, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
And despite that, the Chiefs and Eagles played to an even beat, slipping and sliding to 35-35 tie late in the game.
The Chiefs were already in field goal range, and the Eagles were nearly out of timeouts. All they needed was a first down to drain the clock for Butker.
And they got the first down on a holding call by James Bradberry, who the Eagles plucked from the Giants in the offseason. Some have argued that the penalty should not have been called. Most have suggested the penalty is valid.
But had it not been called, the Eagles would have had plenty of time to go down the field and try and change things.
Instead, they just had a few seconds and all Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts could do was throw the ball onto an empty plot of slippery turf.
A dynasty was nearly complete.
The 2023 Season: The Hang-Out Heard ‘Round The World
On Sept. 12, 2023, the now-defunct media startup The Messenger reported that Kelce and Swift were “quietly hanging out.”
Twelve days later, Swift showed up in a suite at Arrowhead Stadium with Kelce’s mom to watch the Chiefs play the Bears, and the NFL hasn’t been the same since.
Taylor Swift, right, and Travis Kelce’s mom, Donna, sat side by side throughout the Kansas City Chiefs’ game. (Cooper Neill)
Swift ended up going to 13 Chiefs games that season, and every time she did, the broadcast never let the audience forget. She was shown in between plays over and over and over again, drawing plenty of new eyeballs to the game, while rolling many of the eyeballs that were already watching.
Chiefs games set a new standard for viewership in the NFL, as each one became a national pop culture event. Five of the top 10 most-watched prime-time telecasts of 2023 were all Chiefs games, according to data from Variety.
After the end of the end of the regular season, Gracie Hunt, the daughter of Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, announced that Swift’s attendance at Chiefs games has increased the team’s fanbase by 30–40%.
And the Chiefs put on a big show for all of those new fans. They made a playoff run that, for the first time, forced the Chiefs to go on the road to win games. It didn’t even faze them, as they took down the Bills in Buffalo and the Ravens in Baltimore to get back to the Super Bowl.
Super Bowl LVIII: Sin City Magic
Swift flew 5,700 miles and crossed nine time zones in a single day to watch her first Super Bowl as an NFL WAG.
After finishing a leg on her “Eras Tour” in Tokyo, Swift immediately flew to Las Vegas to watch Kelce play in Super Bowl LVIII.
Her show in Tokyo proved to simply be an opening act, as the Chiefs and 49ers battled in one of the longest and most-watched playoff sporting events ever.
It was the most-watched telecast in history with 123.7 million viewers, and they tuned in for 74 minutes and 57 seconds – the longest Super Bowl in history.
The length was credited to the fact that it was only the second Super Bowl ever to go to overtime, and there, it became the first Super Bowl ever to feature multiple scores in overtime.
When overtime began, the 49ers got the ball first, but could only manage a field goal.
Then Mahomes and Kelce came out, with Reid on the sideline, needing 75 yards to clinch a dynasty. They got those 75 yards in a methodical 13-play drive, capped off with a game-winning touchdown pass from Mahomes to Mecole Hardman.
And it was official: The Chiefs were the team of the 2020s.
Travis Kelce says feeling the support from Taylor Swift has been an “amazing experience.” (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
The 2024 Season: A National Obsession
Like many other things in 2024, the Chiefs became a political debate.
It all started with their kicker, Butker, who ignited national outrage from some feminists when he gave a controversial commencement speech at Benedictine College. There, he expressed his conservative values and encouraged women to embrace a traditional role as a wife and mother.
This stirred a divide between many of the new fans who had joined on just for Swift and old-school conservative Chiefs fans who agreed with Butker.
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That divide widened after Brittany Mahomes liked one of then-former President Doanld Trump’s Instagram posts in August. It ignited a controversy so hot, that Trump himself weighed in on the issue and expressed his fondness for the Mahomes family, while disparaging Swift after the pop star endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Sept. 10.
Brittany and Swift stoked election debate around their friendship as they were frequently seen sitting separately at Cheifs games throughout the season. The two were seen together a few times, which cooled speculation about a political divide within the Chiefs family, but fans still argued relentlessly on social media.
The political debates between liberal new fans who joined for Swift and conservative Chiefs fans who supported Butker and Brittany raged on.
Then, the day before the election, Mahomes mother Randi Mahomes threw a bucket of gasoline on the situation by fully and unapologetically announcing her endorsement of Trump at the Chiefs’ game against the Buccaneers, suited in a MAGA hat.
And all the while, the Chiefs got off to an undefeated start while seemingly playing their worst football in years. Week after week, Mahomes and company found ways to pull out games by the slimmest of margins, with many big moments being decided by favorable referee decisions.
It’s a trend that carried into the playoffs. Outrage over multiple questionable officiating decisions in Kansas City’s postseason wins against the Texans and Bills have run rampant in recent weeks, even resulting in one fan starting a petition calling for a boycott until there is referee reform.
But it worked for the Chiefs regardless, as they are back in the Super Bowl for a rematch with the Eagles.
As if the team’s two histories aren’t tied enough, Swift grew up an Eagles fan in Pennsylvania. But even Swift’s father has capitulated to the Chiefs’ evil empire.
Kelce told reporters that Swift’s father, a lifelong Eagles fan, will be wearing a Chiefs’ jersey when the two teams face off Sunday.
Because for the Swift family, and many others in America, the Chiefs simply come before everything else now.
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