Ex-NFL star Colin Kaepernick’s mom pushed him toward Taylor Swift but here’s why he passed

Long before Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce, Colin Kaepernick’s mother reportedly thought the pop star would be a perfect match for her son.

In his new memoir, Perilous Fight, released Tuesday, the 38-year-old former NFL quarterback revealed that his mother, Tessa Kaepernick, once encouraged him to pursue Swift, believing the two would make a great couple.

Kaepernick clarified that he didn’t mean any disrespect toward Swift, 36, but simply told his mother that Swift wasn’t his type.

He didn’t specify exactly when the comment was made, though it likely occurred sometime during his NFL career with the San Francisco 49ers between 2011 and 2016.

By the time he left the league, Kaepernick was already in a relationship with radio host Nessa Diab, and the two later married and welcomed a child together.

Swift, meanwhile, began dating Kelce in 2023, got engaged in 2025, and married him this past July.

In his memoir, Kaepernick also recalled a moment from his youth involving school dances, describing how his mother displayed a photo of him with a white classmate but hid away a similar photo taken with a Black classmate he later took to homecoming.

“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,” Colin claimed. “In her mind, Crystal was just a phase. Lindsay was the kind of girl I should want.”

When asked recently about a potential return to football, Kaepernick joked that he keeps his cleats ready by the door, and suggested he still believes he could outperform some current NFL quarterbacks.