Like many other Swifties, I'm excited about the public spectacle that is Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce courting Taylor Swift. Unlike anyone else on the face of the planet, I am also excited because this budding union gives me an opportunity to talk about a show that has haunted me since 2016. That show is Kelce's reality dating competition series "Catching Kelce." As both a football fan and dating show connoisseur, I dutifully watched all seven episodes when they aired and Kelce has occupied a section of my brain ever since. Since I'm a Swiftie first and football fan second, I thought it was important to share what I learned from rewatching the series.
Kelce's first public attempt to find love aired on E! in October 2016 when he wasn't quite the name he is today. In the years following "Catching Kelce," the tight end would go on to win two Super Bowls with the Chiefs, hold the record for the most consecutive 1,000+ yards seasons for his position and be selected for eight consecutive Pro Bowls. At that time, he was just another football player, desperate enough to say yes to an E! dating show, but interesting enough to warrant one. Meanwhile, Swift had just gotten into a relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, whom she recently broke up with. She was about to disappear completely from the public eye for a year, fall madly in love and begin her "reputation" era.
Travis was in his "Lover" era though, trying his luck with reality TV dating. E! flew out 50 women — one from each state — to line the gridiron of the Coliseum with pom poms in hand to meet their potential future boyfriend. After being given literally 60 seconds with the women, Kelce swiftly cut the pool down to just 20. It was the most brutal cut I have ever seen in any dating show and I need to know why producers didn't go with less women from the start. (Why not 32, one for each NFL team, for example?) The random association with the 50 states also resulted in Kelce mostly referring to the women by their states instead of their names. There was a lot of "You surprised me, New Jersey," and "I could really see something with Missouri." He also sent women home by saying, "I'm gonna have to ask you to go back to [their state]."
This vaguely patriotic distraction aside, "Catching Kelce" had all the staples of your standard reality dating show: a born-again virgin who at one point refers to herself as a "severe Christian," women who are there looking for their "best friend" and a delusional girl from Connecticut. There was a surprise country performance by an artist that all the contestants swear they love but there's no way they've ever heard a single one of their songs, an appearance from uncle-nephew duo LMFAO and an obligatory conversation about how taking care of your athlete husband is the most important job in the world with a woman who is lucky enough to have landed one herself. At one point, Kelce and a contestant spontaneously dive into a fountain while walking home from a date. He slept with at least one of the women, but potentially three of them.
Despite the occasional gesture toward romance or unconvincing reference to finding the one, it was clear no one was there looking for love, especially not Kelce, who slips in and out of a blaccent, by the way. He describes two different women as the kind of people he could see himself introducing to his family and settling down with and then picks neither of those women as the winner. Pretty much immediately, any illusion of true love that shows like "The Bachelor" work so hard to maintain disappeared and we're left with an (at the time) no-name tight end and a gaggle of women who mostly seemed like they felt "meh" towards him.
"Catching Kelce" stuck with me not only because until now I felt like it was a show I had hallucinated, but because it was a dating show where literally no one even cared about dating. While Swifties are investing in Kelce's jersey, I'm here to save you the $12.99 it costs to watch this show on Prime. Below you can find everything a Swiftie deems worthy to know about the show.
