LAS VEGAS — Roger Goodell won’t accept the award for Best Screenplay.
Because the NFL commissioner — nor anybody else in the league office, Goodell said — possess the creative chops to script a storyline as lucrative for the league as Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce dating pop star Taylor Swift all the way to the Chiefs’ date with the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58.
“I don’t think I’m that good a scripter, or anybody on our staff,” Goodell said Monday in his annual pre-Super Bowl news conference. “Listen, there’s no way I could have scripted that one. Let’s just put it that way.”
Goodell pushed back against the more nefarious claims that the league played a hand in securing Chiefs victories so the sideshow of Kelce and Swift could continue through the season’s final game.
“I think the idea that this was a script, that this was pre-planned, that’s nonsense,” Goodell said. “It’s frankly not even worth talking about. We see two people together having fun together. That’s wonderful. I wish them well. They’re both wonderful people.”
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In all, the assembled 125 media members posed four separate Swift-related questions to Goodell — a signal of how the Kelce-Swift romance has captivated the league since September. It’s been overall positive, the commissioner said.
“Both Travis and Taylor are wonderful young people. They both seem very happy,” Goodell said. “(Swift) knows great entertainment, and I think that’s why she loves NFL football. I think it’s great to have her a part of it. Obviously, it creates a buzz. It creates another group of young fans, particularly young women.”
How to keep the new fans they might have gained is something the NFL doesn’t think about too much, Goodell said. Both of Goodell’s 22-year-old daughters are “Swifties,” and Goodell remembers meeting a young Swift in 2009.
“Our girls love Taylor Swift, but they also love football,” Goodell said. “They know a lot about football. So this is just about welcoming people to the game. It’s giving people a different perspective of the game.
“People are talking about the game. Whatever the reason is, I’m good with it. Taylor is obviously a dynamo — everything she touches.”
