I know what we were all thinking following yesterday's news and the answer is yes, there's a chance Arkansas State head coach Butch Jones is in attendance when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get married.
Before they were A-State's head coach and the most famous soon-to-be-groom in America, Jones and Kelce were coach and player at Cincinnati. Barely.
In a story that started as a fun piece of trivia and has evolved into a piece of American pop culture lore, Jones had the opportunity to end Kelce's professional football career before it began until his brother Jason, a fellow future pop culture icon, stepped in to vouch for him.
Jones had just arrived from Central Michigan after Brian Kelly left for Notre Dame, and in January 2010, Jones had all the ammunition he needed to boot Kelce after he failed a drug test during Cincinnati's Sugar Bowl trip weeks earlier. As a new coach, making an example out of a talented, young, and expendable player -- as a reserve quarterback, Kelce touched the ball nine times in the 2009 season -- would've gone a long way toward establishing authority over his new team.
As we know, Jones kept Kelce on the team, provided he met certain conditions. It's not a stretch at all to say Travis Kelce would not be Taylor Swift's fiancé had Butch Jones chosen differently back in 2010.
Fifteen years and several lifetimes later, Kelce and Jones still talk. They spoke on the phone Friday, and Jones's recollection of the conversation implies the two speak regularly.
“[Travis Kelce] called me… He made some innuendos, but I was so focused on our mock game and the Beanie Bowl, I didn’t put two and two together.”
— Courtney Mims (@MimsCourtney) August 26, 2025
Not Butch Jones mentioning Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement in his press conference today 😅😅 pic.twitter.com/9jyxNvZVT8
So, will Butch Jones be at the wedding? Will the most famous female entertainer in American history have a quip ready about Travis's 4-catch, 77-yard, 2-touchdown performance in Cincinnati's 35-24 win over Syracuse in 2012 when Jones comes by the receiving line? Will Jones and Selena Gomez apologize after accidentally bumping into each other on the dance floor?
At this point in time, we simply don't have enough information to state one way or the other. Swift and Kelce just announced their engagement yesterday, after all. There's a lot of speculation that this will be Kelce's final NFL season, which would open up the possibility of a fall wedding, at which point we could safely rule Jones's attendance out. The Sun Belt didn't announce its 2025 football schedule until Feb. 28 of this year, so it's a safe bet that the conference could schedule Arkansas State's off week around the Swift-Kelce wedding in the event it does fall between September and November of 2026. Swift has a new album out in October, and any announced tour dates would obviously eliminate possible wedding dates.
Furthermore, we don't know what type of wedding this will be. The couple could opt for a more intimate affair -- a destination wedding in Oahu, perhaps -- in which it'd be safe to assume the groom's college football coach would not be on the guest list. But who are we kidding? Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce love attention more than they love oxygen. The bride-to-be has a social circle larger than the circumference of the earth, and so given the choice between having 12 guests at her wedding or 1,200, the safer bet lies with 1,200.
If we can assume this will be closest thing America has to a royal wedding, we can expect at least 1,000 guests. Prince William and Kate Middleton welcomed 1,900 guests to their 2011 nuptials, but let's be conservative and cut Swift and Kelce off at an even 1,000. Considering Swift's place in American pop culture, we can also assume the guest list won't be an even 50/50 split. Let's go 75/25, 750 for her and 250 for him.
Considering Jones's place in Kelce's life, and with the evidence that their relationship is current enough that they still speak "about many things" for "a long period of time" (Kelce called Jones, remember, not the other way around), is Butch Jones one of the 250 most important people in Travis Kelce's life?
I think it's safe to say yes. And so I think we can safely presume there's at least a 34.8 percent chance the head football coach at Arkansas State University will be in attendance for the grandest wedding in American history.