Long Island's Taylor Swift fans swept up in Super Bowl fever

Call them the Super Swifties.

These are Taylor Swift fans from Long Island who have become NFL fans because of the pop star’s romance with Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce.

For the second straight season, the Super Swifties will be glued to their TV sets on Sunday as Kansas City plays in the Super Bowl, this time against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans.

“I never watched football until last year,” said Kate O’Brien, 14, of Malverne. “And then every Sunday, whenever there was a game on, I would sit on my couch and had to watch the whole game just because her and Travis were there.”

Swift first attended a Kansas City game on Sept. 24, 2023, and was shown on the broadcast a few times (or many, many, many, many times) as she sat in a suite with Kelce’s mother, Donna.

“Where’s Taylor?” and “What celebrities are in the box with Taylor?” and “When are they going to cut to Taylor?” became an obsession for Swift fans who started to tune in to Kansas City games in droves. The networks obliged, and ratings soared.

The Jan. 26 Kansas City-Buffalo AFC Championship Game that sent Taylor’s team — sorry, Travis’ team — to Super Bowl LIX was viewed by 57.4 million people. That’s the most for an NFL conference championship since 2012, when some of Swift’s most ardent fans were not yet born.

Some of the Super Swifties are hoping Swift will make a surprise performance during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show in New Orleans.

“I actually really think that she is going to come out and do ‘Bad Blood’ with Kendrick Lamar,” said Kate’s 12-year-old sister Jackie. “I just feel that way because she’s going to be there to support Travis. If she’s already there, I feel like even more people would be watching and be, like, really excited.”

Ashley Reilly, a 39-year-old Malverne resident, answered, “Oh, yeah,” when asked if she is watching more NFL action because of Swift.

“My husband always wants to watch the NFL on Sundays,” Reilly said. “That’s sort of never what I want to do on Sundays. I would say since she started dating Travis, it gets a lot more fun.

“At least it’s something to look forward to, like, ‘What is she wearing? Who is she sitting with? What are her reactions?’ It’s just a nice way to keep it interesting while your husband’s watching the game and rooting for Travis to do well so you can see her reactions. It just adds a nice layer of interest for me and my daughter.”

Grace Felice of Miller Place plans to watch the Super Bowl at home with her family. Her 12-year-old daughter, Paige, is a huge Swift fan, and is also now a huge Kansas City fan.

“Of course, she wants to go,” Felice said. “I’m like, ‘We’re not millionaires. That’s not happening.’ I actually looked and I saw some tickets for $6,500. I was like, ‘That’s a steal.’ ”

There has been a wee bit of an anti-Swift backlash amongst hardened NFL fans who just want to watch football and don’t know any Swift songs and don’t care who she is dating and don’t enjoy cutaways to her suite and don’t read newspaper stories with Swift song titles cleverly inserted by the writer. Celebrities who have sat with Swift at Kansas City games include actors Blake Lively (one of her besties), Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, WNBA star Caitlin Clark, Brittany Mahomes, rapper Ice Spice and singer Lana Del Rey, among others.

Is that why CBS only showed Swift once during the first half of the AFC Championship Game? (Yes, there was a "Blank Space" on some fans’ TVs, and it was hard for them to "Shake It Off.")

“I was kind of like, ‘Where is she?’ ” Jackie O’Brien said. “Did she not come?”

Oh, she was there. But the future Hall of Famer Kelce had a rare slow postseason game, with just two catches, and did not score a touchdown. So the cameras only cut to Taylor a few times.

Super Swifties are expecting a big game from Kelce on Sunday. And a lot of Swift, right up until the magical moment when she kisses him on the field if Kansas City wins, as she did after the AFC Championship Game this season and the Super Bowl last season.

That would be a true “Love Story” (Taylor and Travis’ version).

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.