Months before Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift were considered an official item, Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson called their shot.
“Taylor, I don’t know what you are doing with your life right now besides rocking the world. Please try our friend Travis. He is fantastic,” Andrews said during an episode of their Calm Down with Erin and Charissa, which recorded on Aug. 3. “Take us up on this. Go on a date with this guy. Do it for America.”
“There is no one that would give you a better time than this guy,” added Thompson.
But while most would now praise the Fox Sports personalities for their matchmaking abilities, that apparently wasn’t the reaction at the time. On this week’s episode of Calm Down, Andrews revealed that the duo initially received pushback for the perception that their high praise of Kelce was less than professional.
“We had openly said, which got some attention, ‘Taylor Swift, you should date Travis Kelce.’ We both love Travis Kelce, we’ve been open with that,” Andrews told guest Dan Patrick during Tuesday’s episode. “I can be very open that he’s good-looking, he smells great cause my husband [former NHL player Jarret Stoll] thinks he’s good-looking and he smells great. Charissa got a phone call from somebody in the industry that said to her, ‘You really shouldn’t say that about athletes because, you know, you just don’t.’
“What?! What are we saying? And by the way, Charissa’s basically married, I have a kid. Like, you’re fine. We can have fun with s***. We’re not hitting on the athletes.”
While broadcasters are expected to maintain professional relationships with the subjects, there’s no reason to think that anything either Andrews or Thompson said about Kelce in August crossed the line. Especially with the added context that it was on their own podcast, in which they discuss athletes and celebrities in a way that’s authentic and not the stereotypical reporter-speak.
It would be especially ironic if the call that Thompson received came from somebody at Fox, or even within the NFL space. Considering that the Kelce-Swift romance has been one of the league’s biggest stories — and a massive ratings driver — this season, if anything, Andrews and Thompson should be receiving credit, not criticism.
[Calm Down with Erin and Charissa]
