AUSTIN (KXAN) — Who knew a pop music icon was such a fan of former Texas Longhorns wide receiver Xavier Worthy?
Taylor Swift, the 14-time Grammy Award winning musician whose Eras Tour grossed more than $2 billion worldwide, “was screeching” when she found out the Kansas City Chiefs drafted the speedy Texas wideout during the 2024 NFL Draft.
She told the story on the New Heights podcast, hosted by her boyfriend, and Chiefs tight end, Travis Kelce, along with his brother Jason. She didn’t know a thing about football before she started dating Travis, and as she waded into the deep, daunting waters of the game her boyfriend plays, she got into it.
She got so into it that her friends thought she’d gone insane.
“Oh my God, I fell in love with it, I became obsessed with it,” she said. “I became a person who was running through the halls of my house screaming, ‘WE DRAFTED XAVIER WORTHY!’ My friends are like, ‘what is … who body-snatched you? What do you mean we drafted Xavier Worthy?’”
Most boyfriends would simply be proud of their girlfriends for making an effort to learn about something they liked and having a reaction like that, but Travis was blown away for another reason. He had no idea that’s who the Chiefs picked.
“You were the first person to tell me that. I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was like, ‘Wait, is she right?’ I had to look it up to see if she had the wrong information. But yeah, we traded up.”
She even showed her love for Worthy on social media, liking an Instagram post from the Chiefs account announcing Worthy’s pick.
Her excitement undoubtedly came from Worthy’s performance at the NFL Scouting Combine. Worthy ran the 40-yard dash, the marquee event at the combine, in 4.21 seconds, the fastest time in combine history. He broke John Ross’ record by one-hundredth of a second.
Worthy became the first Longhorns player to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl after striking pay dirt against the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59. She caught a 24-yard pass from quarterback Patrick Mahomes late in the third quarter, but by then, the game was far out of reach from the Chiefs. The touchdown made the score 34-6 in favor of the Eagles.
Worthy ended Super Bowl 59 with eight grabs for 157 yards and two touchdown catches, reeling one in from Mahomes for 50 yards in the fourth quarter.