There will be thousands of members of the media in Las Vegas this weekend covering the Super Bowl LVIII showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. Covering the Super Bowl is a bucket-list item for many career sportswriters, but one writer at the game this week has little to no interest in what will actually be happening on the field – she’s just there for the romance between Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.
This week, the Los Angeles Times sent columnist Amy Kaufman to cover Super Bowl LVIII along with the rest of their sports team. But she openly admits that she will not be covering the actual game, saying “My purview is strictly the Taylor Effect.”
“For even as I’ve come to appreciate the sport more, it’s still Swift and Kelce’s love story — and the millions of people who support it — that I find most captivating,” Kaufman wrote in a column for the Los Angeles Times this week. “In fact, it was when I watched Swift walk onto the field after the AFC match — a place I never dreamed her security would allow her to venture — that I knew Super Bowl LVIII would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. When else is the biggest pop star in the world going to be at America’s most popular cultural event not as a performer but to cheer on her boyfriend? All while bringing a whole new audience to something that already seemed ubiquitous? How rare is it to witness soul-affirming romance play out on such a public stage?”
And she’s been at work telling that story this week, even getting the chance to ask Kelce a couple of questions herself during a press conference.
We sent @AmyKinLA to the #SuperBowl (along with her esteemed colleagues in The Times’ sports department) to cover the Taylor Effect. Here's Kelce on the frenzy around #Traylor (or #Tayvis, take your pick).
Read her daily dispatches from Las Vegas: https://t.co/6UBgnVRyQe pic.twitter.com/ztgyVkvkHP
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 8, 2024
“The paper sent me here just to cover you and Taylor,” Kaufman informed Kelce, before asking him why he feels the American public is so fascinated by their relationship.
“The values that we stand for and who we are as people,” Kelce answered. “We love to shine light on others, shine light around the people that help and support us. And on top of that, I feel like we just have a love for life.”
It’s certainly a change of pace for an outlet to send a reporter to the Super Bowl exclusively to cover their dating relationship, but it’s not often that one of the star players is dating arguably the most famous woman on the planet – that certainly changes things.
Like it or not, the relationship between Kelce and Swift is undeniably one of the biggest storylines of the Super Bowl this year, and it’s certainly interesting to see a major outlet lean into this coverage so much that they were willing to use a Super Bowl credential on a writer who openly admits that a year ago, she “couldn’t have told you what sport was involved in the AFC Championship if you’d offered me a million bucks.”
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