Pete Sweeney had a rule. In his job as editor in chief of Arrowhead Pride, a website dedicated to all things Kansas City Chiefs, Sweeney made it a policy to “not really talk about the family members and personal lives of the players.” That is, he adds, “unless we’re forced to.”

Less than a month into this past regular season, with the media frenzy surrounding Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce already reaching fever pitch, Sweeney knew it was “one of those situations where we were forced to.

” The realization came in late September, when the Chiefs were preparing to host the Chicago Bears.

A few days before kickoff, Sweeney’s colleague published a short article about the budding romance on Arrowhead Pride, part of SB Nation’s network of team-focused sites.

On the morning of game day, amid breathless speculation online that Swift would be in attendance, traffic for the article surged thanks to an algorithmic blessing from Google.

“At that stage,” Sweeney says, “I realized we had to at least cover this to a certain point.”