Long before Taylor Swift started a relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, Colin Kaepernick says his mother urged him to pursue the megastar singer.
Kaepernick revealed the surprising news in his new memoir, “The Perilous Fight,” which was released on Tuesday and documents the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback’s life from childhood, through his decision to protest racism and police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games in 2016 and up to his current state.
Swift ‘not his type’
Kaepernick explained that his adoptive mother Teresa, who is white, pushed for him to date Swift at one point his NFL career, which ran from 2011 through 2016.
“When I was in the NFL, she told me that I should ask out Taylor Swift (long before Travis Kelce made his move) because we would be perfect together,” Kaepernick wrote, via the New York Post. “No slight to Taylor, but she was not my type.”
Swift began dating Kelce in 2023, and the pair were engaged in 2025 before tying the knot in a ceremony at Madison Square Garden in July. Kaepernick, meanwhile, has been in a relationship with radio host and television personality Nessa since 2015. The pair welcomed their first child in 2022.
Mom’s Swift proposal part of larger issue
In his memoir, Kaepernick referenced the subject of Swift in conjunction with an anecdote about his high school dating life and his mother’s reaction to it.
“Now that I had my own car, it was time for me to embrace another teenage rite of passage: a girlfriend. I started seeing a very cute Black girl named Crystal. Right away, I noticed how different I felt with her than in my own home,” Kaepernick says, via OutKick. “I could talk to Crystal, really talk to her, without having to explain myself; it was a remarkable discovery, being understood up front and without question. When I visited her home, I was stunned by how warm and welcoming her family was. I immediately felt comfortable there.”
However, the 38-year-old civil rights activist said his mother did not embrace this relationship the way he hoped.
“I asked Crystal to the homecoming dance, a formal affair involving fancy gowns, tuxedoes, and corsages. We had a nice time at the dance. When I got the official portrait from that night, featuring me and Crystal posed up in that classic, airbrushed frame, my mother hid it away in the back of a drawer,” Kaepernick claims.
“My mother convinced me to ask Lindsay, the daughter of one of her friends, to the next formal dance. Lindsay was white. When I brought that picture home, my mother promptly plastered it on the wall for all to see. In her mind, Crystal was just a phase. Lindsay was the kind of girl I should want.”
This issue, along with the ensuing Swift suggestion, told Kaepernick his mother “didn’t seem capable of seeing who I really was.”
