Skip Bayless wonders if he caused Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to rush their engagement

Skip Bayless wouldn’t confirm that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce rushed their engagement announcement to tarnish his podcast, but he also doesn’t seem sure.

Last week, Bayless and his wife, Ernestine, recorded their weekly podcast before the massive news broke that Swift and Kelce were engaged. They discussed Swift during the podcast and added a disclaimer that it was recorded before news of the engagement. As a result, a listener inquired whether Swift and Kelce rushed to announce their engagement due to Bayless. Skip’s wife didn’t think so, but Bayless never really answered the question.

Bayless did claim Kelce knows who he is, making sure to note that Swift’s now fiancé has taken shots at him before. Despite previously drawing Kelce’s ire, Bayless stopped short of stating he was the reason for their engagement announcement. Instead, he credited Swift with most of Travis and Jason Kelce’s media success.

“He and his brother Jason Kelce, he’s in every other ad on television, and it’s all because of Taylor Swift,” Bayless claimed. “Jason Kelce, he played center, the guy who hikes the ball, and he never was that outspoken or that quoted as a center for the Philadelphia Eagles…he wasn’t a character, he wasn’t a live wire, he wasn’t a quote machine. And all of a sudden, only because of Taylor Swift, now he’s become one of the biggest things on ESPN, and he’s in every other commercial.”

Kelce’s 2018 Super Bowl parade speech, where he was dressed as a mummer and firing up Eagles fans with a WWE-style performance, seems to counter that he wasn’t a character long before Swift. And while Swift undoubtedly bolstered the Kelce brothers’ celebrity status and New Heights podcast, they were stars before she started attending games. Jason and Travis Kelce being on opposing teams was one of the biggest storylines leading up to Super Bowl LVII in 2023, even without Swift as a headline booster.

Despite their pre-Taylor Swift fame, it would, however, be wrong to act like she hasn’t had a massive impact on the Kelce brothers, particularly Travis, who went from football star to global celebrity. But after watching the Kelce brothers reach these new heights, Bayless must wonder what would have happened if Swift had ever joined forces with an iconic figure like himself.