Taylor Swift turned me into a Swiftie long before Kelce came along

Yep, that was me, screaming, swooning and singing along in the back of the movie theater watching “The Eras Tour.”

            I even wore friendship bracelets and left the movie with a complimentary Taylor Swift poster that I might have hugged. Three times.

How can you not be a Swiftie?

Especially now. A budding romance with NFL great Travis Kelce has only fueled both careers. He played high school football less than two miles from my house in Cleveland Heights, so I’m thrilled.

            Country music turned me into a Swift fan way back in 2008 with her hit “You Belong to Me.” Now Swift has turned me into a Chiefs fan.

            Yes, the world felt a seismic shift the day we spotted her in the loge right next to Mamma Kelce on Sept. 24. watching the Kansas City Chiefs. The NFL loves it. Swift’s Instagram? 270 million. Theirs? 28 million.

Bam! Sales of Kelce’s No. 87 jersey jumped 400 percent.

            The Swift Effect is certainly swift. Ask Forbes. They’re calling Taylor Swift not the man, but The Woman. Her concert tour is the highest grossing female tour in history.  

The Federal Reserve credits her for boosting the hotel tourism industry with her Eros Tour injecting more than $5 billion into the economy in five months.

Then there are the records.

Not just the ones for which she won 12 Grammy Awards. Swift keeps breaking Spotify records: Biggest streaming day, 228 million. Biggest week, 1 billion. Month, three billion. Year, 21 billion. Biggest album? “Midnights” at 198 million and biggest single, “Anti-History” with 17 million in Spotify chart history.

            We tried to get tickets for her tour. She played 56 stadiums shows in 20 U.S. cities – and gave all 100 truck drivers on her tour a $100,000 bonus. We tried to buy tickets, signing up for concerts in Miami, Indianapolis and Toronto. No, no and no. We couldn’t get in. We couldn’t get to Swift, so she came to us.

            Miss Americana turned her concert into a movie. Made it accessible to the masses for those who couldn’t afford to spend hundreds on concert tickets and hotels.

            Bam! “The Eras Tour” film earned $39 million opening day, the biggest opening for any concert movie in history. I loved all 2 hours and 48 minutes of it. Can you say Girl Crush? 

            Then there’s the Kelce Craze. Those millions swooning over Swift are now going ga ga over Tay Tay and Trav. They were spotted in the Big Apple holding hands. Eeek!! He held the door for her. Eeek!!

            If you don’t think he’s cuter than a koala, you haven’t watched the podcast with brother Jason called “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce.” Jason plays center for the Philadelphia Eagles.

            You gotta love how Travis met Swift. He made her a friendship bracelet with his  phone number on it and tried to give it to her at a concert. Turns out she doesn’t talk to anyone before a concert to save her voice.

            Now we Swifties are falling in love with Travis, too.

Of course, some diehard football fans are tired of seeing her at games. The NFL knows that females already make up 47 percent of NFL fans. Swift is bringing them boatloads of new fans.

            Call it The Swift Effect. She’s made a huge impact on the economy, feminism, politics and changes in the music industry. When a bad deal cut her out of owning rights to her songs, she sidestepped it by rerecording everything in her songbook, took ownership of the new copyright and asked radio stations to play the new versions.

            With one Instagram post on National Voter Registration Day, she inspired 35,000 first-time voters to register.

            When former radio host David Mueller sued her for $3 million claiming she got him fired, she countersued for sexual assault. She won the unanimous verdict after the jury heard her say he grabbed her backside underneath her skirt. She asked for $1.

            Cross her and you’ll end up in a song. As in, “We are never, ever, getting back together.” And, “why do you have to be so mean?”

            She sings songs we can relate to, about making bad choices, moving on, and owning your power. There’s nobody like her and yet she’s like everybody. We love that she never gave up on love and maybe found it with Kelce.

As Coach Bill Belichick said, “Travis Kelce has had a lot of big catches in his career. This would be the biggest.”

            What happens if they break up?

            Expect a lot of new songs for her next tour.