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Big 12 takes victory lap, celebrates Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce engagement

Originally posted on 5 GOATs | By Alex Byington | Last updated Aug 26, 2025 4:25 PM ET

Travis Kelce might not have ever played a down as a member of a Big 12 institution when he was at Cincinnati between 2008-12. But that’s not stopping the Big 12 from celebrating Tuesday’s big news — the engagement of Kelce and pop superstar Taylor Swift.

Shortly after Kelce and Swift sent the internet into a blender with their joint Instagram announcement, Big 12 vice president of communications and strategy Clark Williams playfully released an updated “game note” on X/Twitter announcing the conference is the only Power Four league with an alumnus “currently engaged to Taylor Swift.”

You can see the tweet below:

Game note: the Big 12 Conference is the only P4 league to have a student-athlete alumni currently engaged to Taylor Swift.
— Clark Williams (@_CEWilliams_) August 26, 2025

Kelce, 35, is entering his 13th and what many expect to be his final NFL season after being a third-round pick out of Cincinnati in the 2013 NFL Draft. Of course, Kelce’s Bearcats were affiliated with the Big East throughout his time in Cincinnati, which didn’t join the Big 12 until July 2023.

The Bearcats were among four new additions to the Big 12 — joining BYU, Houston and UCF — in the first of back-to-back offseasn expansions beginning with the 2023 college football season. A year later, the Big 12 formally added former Pac-12 programs Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah after the Big Ten gutted the Pac-12 by adding Oregon, USC, UCLA, and Washington.

Taylor Swift New Heights episode sets Guinness World Record for concurrent views

Tuesday’s engagement announcement comes on the same day Guinness World Records formally acknowledged Swift’s highly-anticipated podcasting debut on the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast on Aug. 13 set the world record for most concurrent views for a podcast on YouTube with 1.3 million viewers. Quite a day for the Kelce and Swift families.

The New Heights episode, which features one of Taylor Swift‘s most in-depth interviews and discussions ever recorded, boasted more than 380 million views on Instagram, 61.6 million views on Twitter/X, 34.5 million views on TikTok and nearly 21 million views on YouTube as of Tuesday. Since the episode aired, @newheightshow on Instagram has surpassed 3.3 million followers and the YouTube channel has gained 400k new subscribers.

Over the duration of the two-hour podcast, the trio discussed Swift’s upcoming album The Life of a Showgirl. Swift reclaimed her entire music catalog and Taylor’s first impression on both Jason and Travis.

In just the first two days, the Swift episode became the highest-viewed podcast in New Heights history. It surpassed Sept. 6, 2023’s episode, which featured Travis, Jason and Jason’s wife, Kylie Kelce.

— On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on 5 GOATs and was syndicated with permission.

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