Nick Wright sets record straight on ‘unfair’ Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift story
Here’s a cautionary tale about how a seemingly harmless comment can spiral into catchy — but misleading — headlines.
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason, talked last week about having a salary-cap expert on their New Heights podcast and Fox Sports’ Nick Wright threw his hat into the proverbial ring.
“(I) love Nick Wright,” Travis Kelce said.
Wright, who grew up in Kansas City and is a huge Chiefs fan, talked about that shoutout on his “What’s Wright? with Nick Wright” podcast.
“My guy Trav. What a delight,” Wright said, per Awful Announcing. “So here is the thing, Trav and I have not like talked talked since he has been serious with Taylor Swift. Since he’s become a super-duper celebrity. I don’t want to bother him during the year. And then last offseason, he was traveling the world with Taylor. And then at the parade last year, we were going to get together after the parade. But there was obviously the tragedy and the shooting. So everything went askew. I haven’t talked to Trav in a while.”
Wright was talking about the shooting at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally at Union Station in February 2024.
But that wasn’t the part that led to splashy headlines. It was the fact that Wright and Kelce haven’t spoken in a while.
Here are some of the headlines that popped up:
Travis Kelce’s friend Nick Wright says they haven’t talked since he got ‘serious’ with Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift put distance between Travis Kelce & his friend
How Taylor Swift relationship put wedge in Travis Kelce’s friendship with sports pal
Has Taylor Swift ruined some of Travis Kelce’s friendships? Nick Wright hints at the pop star’s role in his fading relationship with the Chiefs’ TE
Your first reaction to those headlines might have been “Huh?” and you wouldn’t be alone.
Kelce spent most of last year’s offseason in Hollywood working on his acting career. He shot “Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity?” and FX’s “Grotesquerie.” And, yeah, Kelce also traveled to see Swift’s Eras Tour.
But Wright wanted set the record straight on what he called a “recklessly unfair” narrative about Swift and Kelce.
On his podcast, Wright talked about how his comments were twisted.
“I cannot believe I need to address this ... I am so incredibly, oddly frustrated by this, because I think it is so recklessly unfair to Travis Kelce,” Wright said. “So let me reset exactly what happened, not restate, not clarify, because everything that I said was totally 100% clear. The recreation of this in the headlines, I didn’t misspeak, I didn’t misrepresent as, but the headlines, to me, are. So this is what happened. So New Heights with Travis and Jason Kelce shouted me out after I invited myself on their show to be their salary cap expert. Right? That’s what happened. And Travis said, ‘I love Nick,’ right?
“And I said, as an aside, I was like, I actually haven’t spoken a lot to Travis since he and Taylor got together, with the timeline being, I said, we don’t really talk during the seasons. We have a kind of annual event of being able to get together at the Chiefs Super Bowl parade. But two years ago, the parade was cut short by a tragic shooting, and this year, the parade was canceled by the Philadelphia Eagles. So those two times we didn’t talk.”
Wright then spoke about seeing TNT Sports studio host Adam Lefkoe and his wife at a New York Yankees playoff game last year with Kelce and Swift.
That kind of friendship is not what Wright and Kelce have.
“Trav and I have a great relationship, but we don’t hang out,” Wright said. “We’ve never talked on the phone. Might text or DM occasionally, but I leave him alone during the season, and then the last offseason, he was the busiest man in the world. So that’s what I said. This being represented so unfairly, up to and including in the Times of India, that as if Travis has cut off people in his life or gotten Hollywood, it’s just total (falsehood).”
Taylor Swift’s fame
Wright said he’d laugh off those headlines if he knew Swift and Kelce better and they were cool with it. Wright then talked about Swift’s fame being greater than he realized.
“I truly think she might be the most famous person in the world,” Wright said. “If just someone at my level — whatever that is of notoriety — is having an aside about her boyfriend and the last time we talked ... if her fame gravity is so great that People magazine and the Times of India are like, ‘This will do some foot traffic on the website.’ It’s incomprehensible that level of fame.
“And maybe when you’re that level of fame, you’re just used to things being so kind of misrepresented, or out of whack, but that was an insane realization of the reach that a true global icon has, which Taylor Swift is.”
Here is the segment from Wright’s podcast and be aware he does curse at one point in the diatribe.
This story was originally published April 4, 2025 at 9:29 AM.
