John Riordan: Navigating NFL dating (Travis & Taylor's version)

Coach Prime's romantic redemption in Colorado is one thing but when you need some Swift first-date fodder, America's game serves up plenty

Fri, 22 Sep, 2023 - 06:33

John Riordan

A friend needed some dating advice and he needed it to be of a specifically sporting nature.

None of us are experts in either of these minefields but merging dating and sports is often second nature in the US. To the extent that he was a little worried he wouldn’t have sufficient sports chat to make a solid enough first impression.

This was their first meet-up and because she worked in sports, I could potentially help him put the best foot forward, maybe even help him be a little less nervous.

To keep things somewhat vague and in order to protect unnamed sources (not to mention the fact that we don’t need her to find out about this half-assed plot to impress her quite yet), let’s just say she’s an NFL industry insider.

And that he, emphatically, is not.

He was anxiously early and she was fashionably late so we had some time to brainstorm via text message about a few NFL plotlines to help boost the courtship in its first quarter.

“Can you give me some bullet points on NFL this week” was followed by an even briefer follow-up: “Aaron Rodgers” which was clearly the answer spat back at him by Google at the same time as he asked me.

I pretended to be insulted that he hadn’t read my column the day before but quickly sent it to him anyway because we were up against the shot clock here. He made the empty promise to read it every week moving forward and I started to realise I had my next column topic.

We briefly dealt with the impressive starts to the seasons of the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers, the Irishness of Green Bay Packers punter Daniel Whelan and the need for the Kansas City Chiefs to get their act together (this was the night before they got their act together at Jacksonville).

I urged him to keep it as simple as possible when dropping these headline items to stir up some conversation - the obvious risk here was that she would lob some institutional memory back at him or dive too deep into defensive formations and he would be hung out to dry, nabbed as a fraud before they ever had a chance to be a proper pairing.

But at the same time, these were standard items, too basic to stir her up in a significant way. We needed to get a little more ambitious.

We moved up to the second biggest story in all of football: Coach Prime.

Once again, in the spirit of keeping the analysis at a controllable level, all our hero had to do here was say something basic along the lines of “What about that fella, Coach Prime? What a character! Some story!” But I have room here to elaborate a little on the phenomenon of Deion Sanders aka Coach Prime. He is the current coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, the University of Colorado’s College Football team, based in the picturesque city of Boulder, their football stadium nestled perfectly into the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

Before he was a coach shaking up the college game, he was a dual athlete shaking up the professional game.

Sanders is an NFL and College Football Hall of Famer. Not only did he win a pair of back-to-back Super Bowls at the aforementioned 49ers and Cowboys in the mid 90s, but he is also one of an extremely rare type of athlete that played professionally at the highest level of football and baseball.

Even more impressively, Sanders is the only person ever to have appeared in both a Super Bowl and a World Series. He is widely accepted to be the greatest cornerback of all time, playing 14 seasons in the NFL, but of course he was able to grab the spotlight often when returning interceptions for touchdowns.

Naturally, he was a pioneer in extreme levels of swagger, enough to annoy the good ol’ boys of yesteryear. Sanders was and remains a born entertainer, something that can fall foul of the racists who inspired him to celebrate with more pride every time.

During the 1989 season, he hit a home run for the New York Yankees the same week as he scored a touchdown for the team that had just drafted him, the Atlanta Falcons, becoming the only player ever to do so.

It goes on and on but suffice to say that a little bit of Prime confidence is what we were trying to instil here with our first date wonder.

Deion Sanders the player has emerged as Deion Sanders the coach, staying true to his most maverick traits and rattling those same good ol’ boys that too many of us have the privilege to avoid ever encountering.

Sanders accepted a huge contract to move to Boulder over the past off-season and he immediately took advantage of a brave new world in the sport, one whereby players were freely able to transfer between colleges and avail of newly legal financial incentives to do so.

Coach Prime tore apart the squad he inherited and recruited a record breaking number of acquisitions, including his own sons, star quarterback, Shedeur, and defender Shilo.

I didn’t go into any of this detail, nor did I bother with the wild way Sanders and his energetic underdogs have set the sport alight. Because he is brash and because he is unorthodox in his approach, he has enjoyed plenty of opportunities to quieten his many critics.

But that’s too deep for a date. “Should I ask her what she thinks of the XFL?” Absolutely not.

"I’m gonna be a sports guru if this turns into anything," my friend predicted after I had to explain the difference between Ole Miss and Mississippi State. We were losing the run of ourselves so I needed to rescue the situation and move us to a superficial level of sports talk.

That’s where the biggest story in football came into play.

Last Thursday, after his Philadelphia Eagles won an uneventful Thursday Night Football clash with the Minnesota Vikings, Jason Kelce was asked if his Chiefs Tight End brother Travis was dating Taylor Swift.

He wouldn’t confirm or deny, stumbled over a reply and the internet immediately exploded. This was precisely the sweet spot where a first date with a sprinkling of football could find the right tone, I ventured for our hero.

Who doesn’t love a bit of strong gossip, particularly when it involves one of the most famous modern day NFLers shooting his shot with one of the most famous faces of all?

'I threw it out there, I threw the ball in her court,” the younger Kelce confirmed in the last 24 hours. “I said, "I've seen you rock the stage in (Chiefs stadium) Arrowhead, you might have to come see me rock the stage in Arrowhead, and see which one's a little more lit’."

Theories and counter theories have kept the rest of us entertained for days. Is Philadelphia-born Swift tampering with one of the star players of an Eagles rival? How could she possibly be a Super Bowl half-time show candidate when the heightened logistics of moving her entire tour from Japan to Las Vegas rule it out.

And yet here we are, still hopeful that a wild boy like Travis Kelce could one day have a scathing pop song be written about him and his antics.

Later that evening, as I struggled to stay awake for an absolute barnstormer of a victory for Coach Prime and his Buffaloes in Boulder, Colorado, the NFL Romeo popped up again - “she is class”. He had got to three of the stories but he still hasn’t told me which ones.

But the night was a success and who knows? Maybe the next date will be an NFL game. We’ll have a bit more time to prepare and by the sounds of it, we’re going to need it.